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JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 
From the crayon by S. IV. Rowse in the possession of Professor Charles Eliot A'orton 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

AND HIS FRIENDS 



BY 

EDWAED EVERETT HALE 



WITH PORTRAITS, FACSIMILES, AND OTHER 
ILLUSTRATIONS 




BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 

1899 



0)<2>\ 

r\ 3 



29326 



COPYKIGHT, 1898 AND 1899, BY THE OUTLOOK COMPANY 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 









APR 1 5 1899 



CONTENTS 



eaip. 


PAGE 


I. His Boyhood and Early Life 


1 


II. Harvard College 


15 


III. Literary Work in College 


. 25 


IV. Concord 


43 


V. Boston in the Forties 


. 55 


VI. The Brothers and Sisters 


70 


VII. A Man of Letters 


. 78 


VIII. Lowell as a Public Speaker 


102 


IX. Harvard Revisited 


. 125 


X. Lowell's Experience as an Editor . 


147 


XI. Politics and the War .... 


. 170 


XII. Twenty Years of Harvard 


192 


Xin. Mr. Lowell in Spain .... 


. 215 


XIV. Minister to England 


237 


XV. Home Again 


. 262 


Index 


287 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

James Russell Lowell . Frontispiece 

From the crayon by S. W. Rowse in the possession of 
Professor Charles Eliot Norton. Page 

Entrance to Elmwood facing 4 

From a photograph by Pach Brothers. 

Rev. Charles Lowell 8 

From a painting in the possession of Charles Lowell, 
Boston. 

The Pasture, Elmwood facing 12 

From a photograph by Pach Brothers. 

Edward Tyrrel Channing facing 18 

From the painting by Healy in Memorial Hall, Harvard 
University. 

Nathan Hale facing 36 

From a photograph by Black. 

Lowell's Poem to his College Class facing 50 

From a printed copy lent by Mrs. Elizabeth Scates Beck, 
Germantown, Pa. 
Facsimile of Programme of Valedictory Exercises of 

the Harvard Class of 1838 facing 52 

Lent by Mrs. Elizabeth Scates Beck, Germantown, Pa. 

James Russell Lowell facing 74 

From the crayon by William Page in the possession of 
Mrs. Charles F. Briggs, Brooklyn, N. Y. 

Maria Lowell facing 78 

From the crayon by S. W. Rowse in the possession of 
Miss Georgina Lowell Putnam, Boston. 

Charles F. Briggs facing 84 

From an ambrotype by Brady lent by Mrs. Charles F. 
Briggs, Brooklyn, N. Y. 



s 



vi ILLUSTRATIONS 

Facsimile Contents Page of the Boston Miscellany. 
(The Authors' names are in the handwriting of Nathan 

Hale) facing 86 

Facsimile of Lowell's List of Friends to whom he pre- 
sented copies of Conversations on the Old Poets. " The 

Don " was Robert Carter facing 92 

From the original MS. owned by General James Lowell 
Carter, Boston. 

James Russell Lowell facing 96 

From a daguerreotype, taken in Philadelphia in 1844, 
owned by E. A. Pennock, Boston. 

John Lowell, Jr facing 112 

From a painting by Chester Harding in the possession of 
Augustus Lowell, Boston. 
John Holmes, Estes Howe, Robert Carter, and James 

Russell Lowell . facing 114 

From a photograph by Black owned by General James 
Lowell Carter, Boston. 

Cornelius Conway Felton facing 134 

From a photograph lent by Miss Mary Sargent, Worces- 
ter, Mass. 

Elmwood facing 138 

From a photograph. 

James T. Fields facing 150 

From the photograph by Mrs. Cameron. 

Moses Dresser Phillips facing 154 

From a daguerreotype kindly lent by his daughter, Miss 
Sarah F. Phillips, West Medford, Mass. 

Oliver Wendell Holmes facing 158 

From a photograph taken in 1862. 

Facsimile of A Fable for Critics Proof-sheet with 

Lowell's Corrections facing 162 

Kindly lent by Mrs. Charles F. Briggs, Brooklyn, N. Y. 

William Wetmore Story facing 164 

From a photograph by Waldo Story lent by Miss Ellen 
Eldredge, Boston. 

James Russell Lowell facing 168 

From a photograph taken by Dr. Holmes in 1864. The 



ILLUSTRATIONS yii 

print is signed by both Holmes and Lowell, and is kindly 
lent by Charles Akers, New York, N. Y. 

Sydney Howard Gay facing 178 

From a photograph lent by Francis J. Garrison, Boston. 

Elmwood facing 182 

From a photograph by Miss C. E. Peabody, Cambridge, 
Mass. 

Robert Gould Shaw facing 184 

From a photograph lent by Francis J. Garrison, Boston. 

William Lowell Putnam facing 184 

From the crayon by S. W. Rowse in the possession of 
Miss Georgina Lowell Putnam, Boston. 

Charles Russell Lowell facing 184 

From the crayon by S. W. Rowse in the possession of 
Miss Georgina Lowell Putnam, Boston. 

James Jackson Lowell facing 184 

From a photograph kindly lent by Miss Georgina Lowell 
Putnam, Boston. 

Francis James Child facing 186 

From a photograph lent by Mrs. Child. 

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow facing 188 

From a photograph, taken in 1860, lent by Miss Long- 
fellow. 

Asa Gray facing 196 

From the bronze tablet by Augustus St. Gaudens in Har- 
vard University. 

Louis Agassiz facing 198 

From a photograph lent by Francis J. Garrison, Boston. 

Charles Eliot Norton facing 202 

From a photograph taken in 1870. 

The Hall at Elmwood facing 210 

From a photograph by Mrs. J. H. Thurston, Cambridge. 

Whitby facing 240 

From a photograph kindly lent by The Outlook Com- 
pany. 

Thomas Hughes facing 258 

From a photograph. 



/ 



viii ILLUSTRATIONS 

William Page facing 266 

From a photograph kindly lent by Mrs. Charles F. 
Briggs, Brooklyn, N. Y. 
James Russell Lowell in his Study at Elmwood facing 268 
From a copyrighted photograph taken in the spring of 
1891 by Mrs. J. H. Thurston, Cambridge. This is probably 
the last picture of Mr. Lowell. 
Room adjoining the Library at Elmwood . . . facing 270 

From a photograph by Mrs. J. H. Thurston, Cambridge. 
Facsimile of Letter from Mr. Lowell to Dr. Hale, No- 
vember 11, 1890 facing 274 

First Two and Last Two Stanzas of Mr. Lowell's 

Poem My Brook facing 284 

From the original MS. in the possession of the Rev. Minot 
J. Savage, New York, N. Y. 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 
AND HIS FRIENDS 



CHAPTEE I 

HIS BOYHOOD AND EARLY LD7E 

One cannot conceive more fortunate or charming 
conditions than those of the boyhood and early edu- 
cation of James Russell Lowell. You may study the 
babyhood and boyhood of a hundred poets and not 
find one home like his. His father, the Rev. Charles 
Lowell, was the minister of a large parish in Boston 
for more than fifty years. Before James was born, 
Dr. Lowell had moved his residence from Boston to 
Cambridge, to the home which his children after- 
wards called Elmwood. So much of Mr. Lowell's 
poetry refers to this beautiful place, as beautiful 
now as it was then, that even far-away readers will 
feel a personal interest in it. 

The house, not much changed in the last century, 
was one of the Cambridge houses deserted by the 
Tory refugees at the time of the Revolution. On 
the steps of this house Thomas Oliver, who lived 
there in 1774, stood and heard the demand of the 
freeholders of Middlesex County when they came to 



2 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

bid him resign George the Third's commission. The 
king had appointed him lieutenant-governor of Mas- 
sachusetts and president of the council. But by 
the charter of the province councilors were to be 
elected. Thomas Oliver became, therefore, an object 
of public resentment. A committee of gentlemen of 
the county waited on him on the morning of Sep- 
tember 2, 1774, at this house, not then called Elm- 
wood. At their request he waited at once on Gen- 
eral Gage in Boston, to prevent the coming of any 
troops out from town to meet the Middlesex yeo- 
manry. And he was able to report to them in the 
afternoon that no troops had been ordered, "and, 
from the account I had given his Excellency, none 
would be ordered." The same afternoon, however, 
four or five thousand men appeared, not from the 
town but from the country — "a quarter part in 
arms." For in truth this was a rehearsal for the 
minute-men's gathering of the next spring, on the 
morning of the battle of Lexington. They insisted 
on Oliver's resignation of his commission from the 
crown, and he at last signed the resignation they 
had prepared, with this addition: "My house at 
Cambridge being surrounded by five thousand peo- 
ple, in compliance with their command, I sign my 
name." 

But for Thomas Oliver's intercession with General 
Gage and the Admiral of the English fleet, the Eng- 
lish troops would have marched to Cambridge that 
day, and Elmwood would have been the battle- 
ground of the First Encounter. 

The state confiscated his house after Governor 



HIS BOYHOOD AND EARLY LIFE 3 

Oliver left for England. Elbridge Gerry, one of the 
signers of the Declaration, occupied it afterward. 

Readers must remember that in Cambridge were 
Washington's headquarters, and that the centre 
of the American army lay in Cambridge. During 
this time the large, airy rooms of Elmwood were 
used for the hospital service of the centre. Three 
or four acres of land belonged to the estate. Since 
those early days a shorter road than the old road 
from Watertown to Cambridge has been cut through 
on the south of the house, which stands, there- 
fore, in the midst of a triangle of garden and mea- 
dow. But it was and is well screened from observa- 
tion by high lilac hedges and by trees, mostly elms 
and pines. It is better worth while to say all this 
than it might be were we speaking of some other 
life, for, as the reader will see, the method of edu- 
cation which was followed out with James Russell 
Lowell and his brothers and sisters made a little 
world for them within the confines, not too narrow, 
of the garden and meadow of Elmwood. 

In this home James Russell Lowell was born, on 
the 22d of February, 1819. There is more than 
one reference in his letters to his being born on 
Washington's birthday. His father, as has been 
said, was the Rev. Charles Lowell. His mother be- 
fore her marriage was Harriet Spence, daughter of 
Mary Traill, who was the daughter of Robert Traill, 
of Orkney. They were of the same family to which 
Minna Troil, of Scott's novel of " The Pirate," be- 
longs. Some of us like to think that the second- 
sight and the weird fancies without which a poet's 



4 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

life is not fully rounded came to the child of Elm- 
wood direct by the blood and traditions of Noma 
and the Fitful Head. Anyway, Mrs. Lowell was a 
person of remarkable nature and accomplishments. 
In the very close of her life her health failed, from 
difficulties brought on by the bad food and other 
exposure of desert travel in the East with her hus- 
band. Those were the prehistoric days when trav- 
elers in Elijah's deserts did not carry with them a 
cook from the Palais Royal. But such delicate 
health was not a condition of the early days of the 
poet's life. 

His mother had the sense, the courage, and ex- 
quisite foresight which placed the little boy, almost 
from his birth, under the personal charge of a sister 
eight years older. Mrs. Putnam died on the 1st of 
June, 1898, loving and beloved, after showing the 
world in a thousand ways how well she was fitted 
for the privileges and duties of the nurse, playmate, 
companion, philosopher, and friend of a poet. She 
entered into this charge, I do not know how early — 
I suppose from his birth. I hope that we shall hear 
that she left in such form that they may be printed 
her notes on James's childhood and her care of it. 

Certain general instructions were given by father 
and mother, and under these the young Mentor was 
largely left to her own genius and inspiration. A 
daily element in the business was the little boy's 
nap. He was to He in his cradle for three hours 
every morning. His little nurse, eleven or twelve 
years old, might sing to him if she chose, but she 
generally preferred to read to him from the poets 



HIS BOYHOOD AND EARLY LIFE 5 

who interested her. The cadences of verse were 
soothing, and so the little boy fell asleep every day 
quieted by the rhythm of Shakespeare or Spenser. 
By the time a boy is three years old he does not feel 
much like sleeping three hours in the forenoon. 
Also, by that time this little James began to be in- 
terested in the stories in Spenser, and Mrs. Putnam 
once gave me a most amusing account of the strug- 
gle of this little blue-eyed fellow to resist the coming 
of sleep and to preserve his consciousness so that he 
might not lose any of the poem. 

Of course the older sister had to determine, in 
doubtful cases, whether this or that pastime or occu- 
pation conflicted with the general rules which had 
been laid down for them. In all the years of this 
tender intimacy they never had but one misunder- 
standing. He was quite clear that he had a right 
to do this ; she was equally sure that he must do 
that. For a minute it seemed as if there were a 
parting of the ways. There was no assertion of au- 
thority on her part ; there could be none. But he 
saw the dejection of sorrow on her face. And this 
was enough. He rushed back to her, yielded the 
whole point, and their one dispute was at an end. 
The story is worth telling, if only as an early and 
exquisite exhibition of the profound affection for 
others which is at the basis of Lowell's life. If to 
this loving-kindness you add an extraordinary self- 
control, you have the leading characteristics of his 
nature as it appears to those who knew him earliest 
and best, and who have such right to know where 
the motives of his life are to be found. 



6 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

I am eager to go on in some reminiscences of the 
little Arcadia of Elmwood. But I must not do this 
till I have said something of the noble characteristics 
of the boy's father. Indeed, I must speak of the 
blood which was in the veins of father and son, that 
readers at a distance from Boston may be reminded 
of a certain responsibility which attaches in Massa- 
chusetts to any one who bears the Lowell name. 

I will go back only four generations, when the 
Rev. John Lowell was the Congregational minister 
of Newburypprt, and so became a leader of opinion 
in Essex County. This man's son, James Lowell's 
grandfather, the second John Lowell, is the Lowell 
who as early as 1772 satisfied himself that, at the 
common law, slavery could not stand in Massachu- 
setts. It is believed that he offered to a negro, 
while Massachusetts was still a province of the 
Crown, to try if the courts could not be made to 
liberate him as entitled to the rights of Englishmen. 
This motion of his may have been suggested by 
Lord Mansfield's decision in 1772, in the Somerset 
case, which determined, from that day to this day, 
that — 

" Slaves cannot breathe in England ; if their lungs 
Receive our air, that moment they are free ! 
They touch our country, and their shackles fall ! " 

But in that year John Lowell lost his chance. In 
1779, however, he introduced the clause in our 
Massachusetts Bill of Rights under which the Su- 
preme Court of Massachusetts freed every slave in 
the state who sought his freedom. Let me say in 
passing that some verses of his, written when he was 



HIS BOYHOOD AND EARLY LIFE 7 

quite a young man, are preserved in the " Pietas et 
Gratulatio." This was an elegant volume which 
Harvard College prepared and sent to George III. 
in 1760 on his accession to the crown. They are 
written with the exaggeration of a young man's 
verse ; but they show, not only that he had the ear 
for rhythm and something of what I call the " lyric 
swing," but also that he had the rare art of putting 
things. There is snap and epigram in the lines. 
Here they differ by the whole sky from the verses 
of James Russell, who was also a great-grandfather 
of our poet Lowell. This gentleman, a resident of 
Charlestown, printed a volume of poems, which is 
now very rare. I am, very probably, the only person 
in the world who has ever read it, and I can testify- 
that there is not one line in the book which is worth 
remembering, if, indeed, any one could remember a 
line of it. 

John Lowell, the emancipator, became a judge. 
He had three sons, — John Lowell, who, without 
office, for many years led Massachusetts in her po- 
litical trials ; Francis Cabot Lowell, the founder of 
the city of Lowell ; and Charles Lowell, the father 
of the poet. It is Francis Lowell's son who founded 
the Lowell Institute, the great popular university of 
Boston. It is Judge John Lowell's grandson who 
directs that institution with wonderful wisdom ; and 
it is his son who gives us from day to day the last 
intelligence about the crops in Mars, or reverses the 
opinions of centuries as to the daily duties of Mer- 
cury and Venus. I say all this by way of illustra- 
tion as to what we have a right to expect of a 



8 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

Lowell, and, if you please, of what James Russell 
Lowell demanded of himself as soon as he knew 
what blood ran in his veins. 

In this connection one thing must be said with a 
certain emphasis ; for the impression has been given 
that James Russell Lowell took up his anti-slavery 
sentiment from lessons which he learned from the 
outside after he left college. 

The truth is that Wilberforce's portrait hung 
opposite his father's face in the dining-room. And 
it was not likely that in that house people had for- 
gotten who wrote the anti-slavery clauses in the 
Massachusetts Bill of Rights only forty years before 
Lowell was born. 

Before he was a year old the Missouri Compro- 
mise passed Congress. The only outburst of rage 
remembered in that household was when Charles 
Lowell, the father, lost his self-control, on the morn- 
ing when he read his newspaper announcing that 
capitulation of the North to its Southern masters. 
It took more than forty years before that same 
household had to send its noblest offering to the 
war which should undo that capitulation. It was 
forty-five years before Lowell delivered the Har- 
vard Commemoration Ode under the college elms. 

We are permitted to publish for the first time a 
beautiful portrait of the Rev. Charles Lowell when 
he was at his prime. The picture does more than I 
can do to give an impression of what manner of 
man he was, and to account for the regard, which 
amounts to reverence, with which people who knew 
him speak of him to this hour. The reader at a 




REV. CHARLES LOWELL 
From a painting in the possession of Charles Lowe/i, Boston 



HIS BOYHOOD AND EARLY LIFE 9 

distance must try to imagine what we mean when 
we speak of a Congregational minister in New Eng- 
land at the end of the last century and at the begin- 
ning of this. We mean a man who had been chosen 
by a congregation of men to be their spiritual 
teacher for his life through, and, at the same time, 
the director of sundry important functions in the 
administration of public affairs. When one speaks 
of the choice of Charles Lowell to be a minister in 
Boston, it is meant that the selection was made by 
men who were his seniors, perhaps twice his age, 
among whom were statesmen, men of science, leaders 
at the bar, and merchants whose sails whitened all 
the ocean. Such men made the selection of their 
minister from the young men best educated, from 
the most distinguished families of the State. 

In 1805 Charles Lowell returned from profes- 
sional study in Edinburgh. He had been traveling 
that summer with Mr. John Lowell, his oldest 
brother. In London he had seen Wilberforce, who 
introduced him into the House of Commons, where 
he heard Fox and Sheridan. Soon after he arrived 
in Boston he was invited to preach at the West 
Church. 

This church was the church of Mayhew, who was 
the Theodore Parker of his time. Mayhew was in 
the advance in the Kevolutionary sentiment of his 
day, and Samuel Adams gave to him the credit of 
having first suggested the federation of the Colo- 
nies : " Adams, we have a communion of churches ; 
why do we not make a communion of states?" 
This he said after leaving the communion table. 



10 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

In such a parish young Charles Lowell preached in 
1805, from the text, " Rejoice in the Lord alway." 
Soon after, he was unanimously invited to settle as 
its minister, and in that important charge he re- 
mained until he died, on the 20th of January, 1861. 

Mr. Lowell was always one of those who inter- 
preted most broadly and liberally the history and 
principles of the Christian religion. But he was 
never willing to join in the unfortunate schism 
which divided the Congregational churches between 
Orthodox and Unitarian. He and Dr. John Pierce, 
of Brookline, to their very death, succeeded in 
maintaining a certain nominal connection with the 
Evangelical part of the Congregational body. 

The following note, written thirty-six years after 
James Lowell was born, describes his position in the 
disputes of " denominationalists " : — 

My dear Sir : You must allow me to say that, 
whilst I am most happy to have my name announced 
as a contributor toward any fund that may aid in 
securing freedom and religious instruction to Kan- 
sas, I do not consent to its being announced as the 
minister of a Unitarian or Trinitarian church, in the 
common acceptation of those terms. If there is 
anything which I have uniformly, distinctly, and 
emphatically declared, it is that I have adopted no 
other religious creed than the Bible, and no other 
name than Christian as denoting my religious faith. 
Very affectionately your friend and brother, 

Cha. Lowell. 

Elm wood, Cambridge, 

December 19, 1855. 



HIS BOYHOOD AND EARLY LIFE 11 

It may be said that he was more known as a min- 
ister than as a preacher. There was no branch of 
ministerial duty in which he did not practically en- 
gage. His relations with his people, from the be- 
ginning to the end, were those of entire confidence. 
But it must be understood, while this is said, that 
he was a highly popular preacher everywhere, and 
every congregation, as well as that of the West 
Church, was glad if by any accident of courtesy or 
of duty he appeared in the pulpit. 

The interesting and amusing life by which the 
children of the family made a world of the gardens 
of Elmwood was in itself an education. The garden 
and grounds, as measured by a surveyor, were only 
a few acres. But for a circle of imaginative chil- 
dren, as well led as the Lowell children were, this is 
a little world. One is reminded of that fine passage 
in Miss Trimmers' s " Bobins," where, when the 
four little birds have made their first flight from 
the nest into the orchard, Pecksy says : " Mamma, 
what a large place the world is ! " Practically, I 
think, for the earlier years of James Lowell's life, 
Elmwood furnished as large a world as he wanted. 
Within its hedges and fences the young people 
might do much what they chose. They were Mary, 
who was the guardian; then came William; after- 
wards Bobert, whose name is well known in our lit- 
erature ; and then James. The four children were 
much together; they found nothing difficult, for 
work or for pastime. Another daughter, Bebecca, 
was the songstress of the home ; with a sweet flexi- 
ble voice she sang, in her childhood, hymns, and 



12 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

afterwards the Scotch melodies and the other popu- 
lar music of the day. 

The different parts of the grounds of Elmwood 
became to these children different cities of the 
world, and they made journeys from one to another. 
Their elder brother Charles, until he went to Exeter 
to school, joined in this geographical play. 

The father and mother differed from each other, 
but were allied in essentials ; they enjoyed the same 
tastes and followed the same pursuits in literature 
and art. Dr. Lowell was intimate with Allston, the 
artist, whose studio was not far away, and the pro- 
gress of his work was a matter of home conversa- 
tion. 

Mrs. Putnam told me that in " The First Snow- 
fall " would be found a reference to Lowell's elder 
brother William, who died when the poet himself 
was but five years old ; another trace of this early 
memory appears again in the poem " Music," in 
"A Year's Life." 

To such open-air life we may refer the pleasure 
he always took in the study of birds, their seasons 
and habits, and the accuracy of his knowledge with 
regard to trees and wild flowers. 

In the simple customs of those days, when one 
clergyman exchanged pulpits with another, Dr. 
Lowell would drive in his own " chaise " to the par- 
sonage of his friend, would spend the day there, 
and return probably on Monday morning. He soon 
found that James was a good companion in such 
rides, and the little fellow had many reminiscences 
of these early travels. It would be easy to quote 




THE PASTURE, ELMWOOD 



HIS BOYHOOD AND EARLY LITE 13 

hundreds of references in his poems and essays to 
the simple Cambridge life of these days before col- 
lege. Thus here are some lines from the poem 
hardly known, on " The Power of Music." 

" When, with feuds like Ghibelline and Guelf, 
Each parish did its music for itself, 
A parson's son, through tree-arched country ways, 
I rode exchanges oft in dear old days, 
Ere yet the boys forgot, with reverent eye, 
To doff their hats as the black coat went by, 
Ere skirts expanding in their apogee 
Turned girls to bells without the second e ; 
Still in my teens, I felt the varied woes 
Of volunteers, each singing as he chose, 
Till much experience left me no desire 
To learn new species of the village choir." 

So soon as the boy was old enough he was sent 
to the school of Mr. William Wells, an English 
gentleman who kept a classical school in Cambridge, 
not far from Dr. Lowell's house. Of this school Dr. 
Holmes and Mr. Higginson have printed some of 
their memories. All the Cambridge boys who were 
going to college were sent there. Mr. Wells was a 
good Latin scholar, and on the shelves of old-fash- 
ioned men will still be found his edition of Tacitus, 
printed under his own eye in Cambridge, and one 
of the tokens of that " Renaissance " in which Cam- 
bridge and Boston meant to show that they could 
push such things with as much vigor and success as 
they showed in the fur trade or in privateering. A 
very good piece of scholarly work it is. Mr. Wells 
was a well-trained Latinist from the English schools, 
and his boys learned their Latin well. And it is 
worth the while of young people to observe that in 



U JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

the group of men of letters at Cambridge and Bos- 
ton, before and after James Lowell's time, Samuel 
Eliot, William Orne White, James Freeman Clarke, 
Charles and James Lowell, John and Wendell 
Holmes, Charles Sumner, Wentworth Higginson, 
and other such men never speak with contempt of 
the niceties of classical scholarship. You would not 
catch one of them in a bad quantity, as you some- 
times do catch to-day even a college president, if 
you are away from Cambridge, in the mechanical 
Latin of his Commencement duty. 

But though the boys might become good Latin- 
ists and good Grecians, the school has not a savory 
memory as to the personal relations between master 
and pupils. James Lowell, however, knew but little 
of its hardships, as he was but a day scholar. Dr. 
Samuel Eliot, who attended the school as a little boy, 
tells me that Lowell delighted to tell the boys ima- 
ginative tales, and the little fellows, or many of them, 
took pleasure in listening to the more stirring sto- 
ries. " I remember nothing of them except one, 
which rejoiced in the central interest of a trap in 
the playground, which opened to subterranean mar- 
vels of various kinds." 



CHAPTER II 

HARVARD COLLEGE 

From such life, quite familiar with Cambridge 
and its interests, Lowell presented himself for 
entrance at Harvard College in the summer of 1834, 
and readily passed the somewhat strict examination 
which was required. 

Remember, if you please, or learn now, if you 
never knew, that " Harvard College " was a college 
by itself, or " seminary," as President Quincy used 
to call it, and had no vital connection with the 
law school, the school of medicine, or the divinity 
school, — though they were governed by the same 
Board of Fellows, and, with the college, made up 
Harvard University. Harvard College was made of 
four classes, — numbering, all told, some two hun- 
dred and fifty young men, of all ages from fourteen 
to thirty-five. Most of them were between sixteen 
and twenty-two. In this college they studied Latin, 
Greek, and mathematics chiefly. But on " modern 
language days," which were Monday, Wednesday, 
and Friday, there appeared teachers of French, 
Italian, Spanish, German, and Portuguese; and 
everybody not a freshman must take his choice 
in these studies. They were called " voluntaries," 
not because you could shirk if you wanted to, for 



16 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

you could not, but because you chose German or 
Italian or Spanish or French or Portuguese. When 
you had once chosen, you had to keep on for four 
terms. But as to college " marks " and the rank 
which followed, a modern language was " worth " 
only half a classical language. 

Beside these studies, as you advanced you read 
more or less in rhetoric, logic, moral philosophy, 
political economy, chemistry, and natural history, — 
less rather than more. There was no study what- 
ever of English literature, but the best possible 
drill in the writing of the English language. There 
was a well selected library of about fifty thousand 
volumes, into which you might go on any week-day 
at any time before four o'clock and read anything 
you wanted. You took down the book with your 
own red right hand, and you put it back when you 
were done. 

Then there were three or four society libraries. 
To these you contributed an entrance fee, when you 
were chosen a member, and an annual fee of per- 
haps two dollars. With this money the society 
bought almost all the current novels of the time. 
Novels were then published in America in two vol- 
umes, and they cost more than any individual student 
liked to pay. One great object in joining a college 
society was to have a steady supply of novels. For 
my part, I undoubtedly averaged eighty novels a 
year in my college course. They were much better 
novels, in my judgment, than the average novels of 
to-day are, and I know I received great advantage 
from the time I devoted to reading them. I think 



HARVARD COLLEGE 17 

Lowell would have said the same thing. But I do 
not mean to imply that such reading was his princi- 
pal reading. He very soon began delving in the 
stores which the college library afforded him of the 
older literature of England. 

You had to attend morning chapel and evening 
chapel. Half the year these offices were at six in 
the morning and six at night. But as the days 
shortened, morning prayers came later and later, — 
even as late as half past seven in the morning, — 
while afternoon prayers came as early as quarter past 
four, so that the chapel need not be artificially lighted. 
On this it followed that breakfast, which was an 
hour and twenty minutes after prayers, might be 
long after eight in the morning, and supper at half 
past four in the afternoon. This left enormously 
long evenings for winter reading. 

Lowell found in the government some interesting 
and remarkable men. 

Josiah Quincy, the president, had been the mayor 
of Boston who had to do with ordering the system 
and precedents of its government under the new city 
charter. From a New England town, governed by 
the fierce democracy of town meetings, he changed 
it into a " city," as America calls it, ruled by an 
intricate system of mayor, aldermen, council, school 
committee, and overseers of the poor. Of a distin- 
guished patriot family, Mr. Quincy had been, for 
years of gallant battle, a leader in Congress of the 
defeated and disconcerted wrecks of the Federal 
party. His white plume never went down, and he 
fought the Southern oligarchy as cheerfully as 



18 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

Amadis ever fought with his uncounted enemies. 
He was old enough to have been an aide to Gov- 
ernor Hancock when Washington visited Boston in 
1792. In Congress he had defied John Kandolph, 
who was an antagonist worthy of him ; and he hated 
Jefferson, and despised him, I think, with a happy- 
union of scorn and hatred, till he died. When he 
was more than ninety, after the civil war began, I 
had my last interview with him. He was rejoiced 
that the boil had at last suppurated and was ready 
to be lanced, and that the thing was to be settled in 
the right way. He said : " Gouverneur Morris once 
said to me that we made our mistake when we 
began, when we united eight republics with five 
oligarchies." 

It is interesting now to know, what I did not 
know till after his death, that this gallant leader of 
men believed that he was directed, in important 
crises, by his own " Daimon," quite as Socrates be- 
lieved. In the choice of his wife, which proved 
indeed to have been made in heaven, he knew he 
was so led. And, in after Jife, he ascribed some 
measures of importance and success to his prompt 
obedience to the wise Daimon's directions. 

His wife was most amiable in her kind interest in 
the students' lives. The daughters who resided 
with him were favorites in the social circles of Cam- 
bridge. 

Most of the work of the college was then done 
in rather dreary recitations, such as you might ex- 
pect in a somewhat mechanical school for boys 
to-day. But Edward Tyrrel Channing, brother of 




EDWARD TYRREL CHANNING 



HARVARD COLLEGE 19 

the great divine, met his pupils face to face and 
hand to hand. He deserves the credit of the Eng- 
lish of Emerson, Holmes, Sumner, Clarke, Bellows, 
Lowell, Higginson, and other men whom he trained. 
Their English did more credit to Harvard College, 
I think, than any other of its achievements for those 
thirty-two years. You sat, physically, at his side. 
He read your theme aloud with you, — so loud, if he 
pleased, that all of the class who were present could 
hear his remarks of praise or ridicule, — " Yes, we 
used to have white paper and black ink ; now we 
have blue paper, blue ink." I wonder if Mr. Emer- 
son did not get from him the oracle, " Leave out the 
adjectives, and let the nouns do the fighting." I 
think that is Emerson's. Or whose is it ? 

In 1836, when Lowell was a sophomore, Mr. 
Longfellow came to Cambridge, a young man, to 
begin his long and valuable life in the college. 
His presence there proved a benediction, and, I 
might say, marks an epoch in the history of Har- 
vard. In the first place, he was fresh from Europe, 
and he gave the best possible stimulus to the bud- 
ding interest in German literature. In the second 
place, he came from Bowdoin College, and in those 
days it was a very good thing for a Harvard under- 
graduate to know that there were people not bred 
in Cambridge quite as well read, as intelligent, as 
elegant and accomplished as any Harvard graduate. 
In the third place, Longfellow, though he was so 
young, ranked already distinctly as a man of letters. 
This was no broken-winded minister who had been 
made professor. He was not a lawyer without 



20 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

clients, or a doctor without patients, for whom " a 
place" had to be found. He was already known 
as a poet by all educated people in America. The 
boys had read in their "First Class Book" his 
"Summer Shower" verses. By literature, pure 
and simple, and the work of literature, he had won 
his way to the chair of the Smith professorship of 
modern literature, to which Mr. George Ticknor 
had already given distinction. Every undergrad- 
uate knew all this, and felt that young Longfellow's 
presence was a new feather in our cap, as one did 
not feel when one of our own seniors was made 
a tutor, or one of our own tutors was made a pro- 
fessor. 

But, better than this for the college, Longfellow 
succeeded, as no other man did, in breaking that 
line of belt ice which parted the students from their 
teachers. Partly, perhaps, because he was so 
young ; partly because he was agreeable and charm- 
ing ; partly because he had the manners of a man 
of the world, because he had spoken French in 
Paris and Italian in Florence ; but chief of all be- 
cause he chose, he was companion and friend of the 
undergraduates. He would talk with them and 
walk with them; would sit with them and smoke 
with them. You played whist with him if you met 
him of an evening. You never spoke contemp- 
tuously of him, and he never patronized you. 

Lowell intimates, however, in some of his letters, 
that he had no close companionship with Long- 
fellow in those boyish days. He shared, of course, 
as every one could, in the little Renaissance, if one 



HARVARD COLLEGE 21 

may call it so, of interest in modern Continental 
literature, on Longfellow's arrival in Cambridge. 

I cannot remember — I wish I could — whether 
it were Longfellow or Emerson who introduced 
Tennyson in college. That first little, thin volume 
of Tennyson's poems, with "Airy, fairy Lillian" 
and the rest, was printed in London in 1830. It 
was not at once reprinted in America. It was 
Emerson's copy which somebody borrowed in Cam- 
bridge and which we passed reverently from hand 
to hand. 1 Everybody who had any sense knew that 
a great poet had been born as well as we know it 
now. And it is always pleasant to me to remember 
that those first poems of his were handed about in 
manuscript as a new ode of Horace might have been 
handed round among the young gentlemen of Rome. 

Carlyle's books were reprinted in America, thanks 
to Emerson, as fast as they were written. Lowell 
read them attentively, and the traces of Carlyle 
study are to be found in all Lowell's life, as in the 
life of all well educated Americans of his time. 

I have written what I have of Channing and 
Longfellow with the f eeling that Lowell would him- 
self have said much more of the good which they 
did to all of us. I do not know how much his 
clear, simple, unaffected English style owes to 
Channing, but I am quite sure that he would have 
spoken most gratefully of his teacher. 

Now as to the atmosphere of the college itself. 

1 That copy is still preserved, — among the treasures of Mr. 
Emerson's library in Concord, — beautifully bound, for such was his 
habit with books which he specially loved. 



22 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

I write these words in the same weeks in which I 
am reading the life of Jowett at Oxford. It is 
curious, it is pathetic, to compare Balliol College 
in 1836-7 with Harvard College at the same time. 
So clear is it that the impulse and direction were 
given in Oxford by the teachers, while with us the 
impulse and direction were given by the boys. 
The boys invariably called themselves " men," even 
when they were, as Lowell was when he entered, 
but fifteen years old. 

Let it be remembered, then, that the whole drift 
of fashion, occupation, and habit among the under- 
graduates ran in lines suggested by literature. 
Athletics and sociology are, I suppose, now the 
fashion at Cambridge. But literature was the fash- 
ion then. In November, when the state election 
came round, there would be the least possible spasm 
of political interest, but you might really say that 
nobody cared for politics. Not five " men " in col- 
lege saw a daily newspaper. My classmate, William 
Francis Channing, would have been spoken of, I 
think, as the only Abolitionist in college in 1838, 
the year when Lowell graduated. I remember that 
Dr. Walter Channing, the brother of our professor, 
came out to lecture one day on temperance. There 
was a decent attendance of the undergraduates, 
but it was an attendance of pure condescension on 
their part. 

Literature was, as I said, the fashion. The books 
which the fellows took out of the library, the 
books which they bought for their own subscription 
libraries, were not books of science, nor history, nor 



HARVARD COLLEGE 23 

sociology, nor politics ; they were books of literature. 
Some Philadelphia publisher had printed in one vol- 
ume Coleridge's poems, Shelley's, and Keats's — a 
queer enough combination, but for its chronological 
fitness. And you saw this book pretty much every- 
where. At this hour you will find men of seventy 
who can quote their Shelley as the youngsters of 
to-day cannot quote, shall I say, their Swinburne, 
their Watson, or their Walt Whitman. In the way 
of what is now called science (we then spoke of the 
moral sciences also) Daniel Treadwell read once a 
year some interesting technological lectures. The 
Natural History Society founded itself while Lowell 
was in college ; but there was no general interest in 
science, except so far as it came in by way of the 
pure mathematics. 

In the year 1840 I was at West Point for the 
first time, with William Story, Lowell's classmate 
and friend, and with Story's sister and mine. We 
enjoyed to the full the matchless hospitality of 
West Point, seeing its lions under the special care 
of two young officers of our own age. They had 
just finished their course, as we had recently finished 
ours at Harvard. One day when Story and I were 
by ourselves, after we had been talking of our stud- 
ies with these gentlemen, Story said to me : " Ned, 
it is all very well to keep a stiff upper lip with these 
fellows, but how did you dare tell them that we 
studied about projectiles at Cambridge?" 

u Because we did," said I. 

"Did I ever study projectiles?" asked Story, 
puzzled. 



24 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

" Certainly you did/' said I. " You used to go 
up to Peirce Tuesday and Thursday afternoons in 
the summer when you were a junior, with a blue 
book which had a white back." 

"I know I did/' said Story; "and was I studying 
projectiles then ? This is the first time I ever heard 
of it." 

And I tell that story because it illustrates well 
enough the divorce between theory and fact which 
is possible in education. I do not tell it by way of 
blaming Professor Peirce or Harvard College. Story 
was not to be an artilleryman, nor were any of the 
rest of us, so far as we knew. Anyway, the choice 
of our specialty in life was to be kept as far distant 
as was possible. 



CHAPTER III 

LITERARY WORK IN COLLEGE 

" Harvardiana," a college magazine which ran 
for four years, belongs exactly to the period of 
Lowell's college life. Looking over it now, it seems 
to me like all the rest of them. That is, it is as good 
as the best and as bad as the worst. 

There is not any great range for such magazines. 
The articles have to be short. And the writers know 
very little of life. All the same, a college magazine 
gives excellent training. Lowell was one editor of 
the fourth volume of " Harvardiana." I suppose he 
then read proof for the first time, and in a small way 
it introduced him into the life of an editor, — a life 
in which he afterwards did a great deal of hard 
work, which he did extremely well, as we shall pre- 
sently see. 

The editorial board of the year before, from whose 
hands the five editors of the class of '38 took " Har- 
vardiana," was a very interesting circle of young 
men. They were, by the way, classmates and friends 
of Thoreau, who lived to be better known than they; 
but I think he was not of the editorial committee. 
The magazine was really edited in that year entirely 
by Charles Hayward, Samuel Tenney Hildreth, and 
Charles Stearns Wheeler. Horatio Hale, the philo- 



26 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

logist, was in the same class and belonged to the 
same set. He was named as one of the editors. 
But he was appointed to Wilkes's exploring expedi- 
tion a year before he graduated, — a remarkable 
testimony, this, to his early ability in the lines of 
study in which he won such distinction afterwards. 
It is interesting and amusing to observe that his 
first printed work was a vocabulary of the language 
of some Micmac Indians, who camped upon the col- 
lege grounds in the summer of 1834. Hale learned 
the language from them, made a vocabulary, and 
then set up the type and printed the book with his 
own hand. Hayward, Hildreth, and Wheeler, who 
carried on the magazine for its third volume, all 
died young, before the age of thirty. Hayward had 
written one or more of the lives in Sparks's " Ameri- 
can Biography," Wheeler had distinguished himself 
as a Greek scholar here and in Europe, and Hildreth, 
as a young poet, had given promise for what we all 
supposed was to be a remarkable future. 

To this little circle somebody addressed himself 
who wanted to establish a chapter of Alpha Delta 
Phi in Cambridge in 1836. Who this somebody 
was, I do not know. I wish I did. But he came 
to Cambridge and met these leaders of the literary 
work of the classes of '37 and '38, and among them 
they agreed on the charter members for the forma- 
tion of the Alpha Delta Phi chapter at Harvard. 
The list of the members of the Harvard classes of 
1837 and 1838 shows that these youngsters knew 
already who their men of letters were. It consists of 
fourteen names : John Bacon, John Fenwick Eustis, 



LITERARY WORK IN COLLEGE 27 

Horatio Hale, Charles Hayward, Samuel Tenney Hil- 
dreth, Charles Stearns Wheeler, Henry Williams, 
James Ivers Trecothick Coolidge, Henry Lawrence 
Eustis, Nathan Hale, Eufus King, George Warren 
Lippitt, James Kussell Lowell, and Charles Wood- 
man Scates. 

This is no place for a history of Alpha Delta Phi. 
At the moment when the Phi Beta Kappa fraternity, 
the oldest of the confederated college societies, gave 
up its secrets, Alpha Delta Phi was formed in Ham- 
ilton College of New York. I shall violate none of 
her secrets if I say, what the history of literature in 
America shows, that, in the earlier days at least, 
interest in literature was considered by those who 
directed the society as a very important condition in 
the selection of its members. 

At Cambridge, when Lowell became one of its 
first members, there was a special charm in member- 
ship. Such societies were absolutely forbidden by 
a hard and fast rule. They must not be in Harvard 
College. The existence of the Alpha Delta chapter, 
therefore, was not to be known, even to the great 
body of the undergraduates. It had no public 
exercises. There was no public intimation of meet- 
ings. In truth, if its existence had been known, 
everybody connected with it would have been se- 
verely punished, under the college code of that day. 

This element of secrecy gave, of course, a special 
charm to membership. I ought to say that, after 
sixty years, it makes it more difficult to write of its 
history. I was myself a member in '37, '38, and 
'39. Yet, in a somewhat full private diary which I 



28 JAMES KUSSELL LOWELL 

kept in those days, I do not find one reference to 
my attendance at any meeting; so great was the 
peril, to my boyish imagination, lest the myrmidons 
of the " Faculty " should seize upon my papers and 
examine them, and should learn from them any fact 
regarding the history of this secret society. 

But now, after sixty years, I will risk the ven- 
geance of the authorities of the university. Perhaps 
they will take away all our degrees, honorary and 
otherwise; but we will venture. This very secret 
society, after it was well at work, may have counted 
at once twenty members, — seniors, juniors, and 
sophomores. They clubbed their scanty means and 
hired a small student's room in what is now Holyoke 
Street, put in a table and stove and some chairs, 
and subscribed for the English quarterlies and Black- 
wood. This room was very near the elegant and 
convenient club-house owned by the society to-day, 
if indeed this do not occupy the same ground, as I 
think it does. Everybody had a pass-key. It was 
thus a place where you could loaf and be quiet and 
read, and where once a week we held our literary 
meetings. Of other meetings, the obligations of 
secrecy do not permit me to speak. One of my 
friends, the other day, said that his earliest recollec- 
tion of Lowell was finding him alone in this modest 
club-room reading some article in an English review. 
What happened was that we all took much more 
interest in the work which the Alpha Delta provided 
for us than we did in most of the work required of 
us by the college. 

At that time the conventional division of classes 



LITERARY WORK IN COLLEGE 29 

at Cambridge made very hard and fast distinctions 
between students of different classes. Alpha Delta 
broke up all this and brought us together as gentle- 
men ; and, naturally, the younger fellows did their 
very best when they were to read in the presence 
of their seniors. I think, though I am not certain, 
that I heard Lowell read there the first draft of his 
papers on Old English Dramatists, which he pub- 
lished afterwards in my brother's magazine, the 
"Boston Miscellany," and which were the subject 
of the last course of lectures which he delivered. 

From this little group of Alpha Delta men were 
selected the editors of " Harvardiana " for 1837-38. 
I suppose, indeed, that in some informal way Alpha 
Delta chose them. They were Kufus King, after- 
wards a leader of the bar in Ohio ; George Warren 
Lippitt, so long our secretary of legation at Vi- 
enna ; Charles Woodman Scates, who went into the 
practice of law in Carolina ; James Russell Lowell ; 
and my brother, Nathan Hale, Jr. All of them 
stood, when chosen, in what we call the first half of 
the class. This meant that they were within the 
number of twenty-four students who had had honors 
at the several exhibitions up to that time. In point 
of fact, twenty-four was not half the class. But 
that phrase long existed ; I do not know how long. 
Practically, to say of a graduate that he was in " the 
first half of his class " meant that at these exhibi- 
tions, or at Commencement, he had received some 
college honor. 

I rather think that the average senior of that 
year approved this selection of editors, and he 



30 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

would have said in a general way that King and 
Lippitt were expected to do that heavy work of 
long eight-page articles which is supposed by boys 
to make such magazines respected among the gradu- 
ates ; that Scates was relied upon for critical work ; 
that my brother was supposed to have inherited a 
faculty for editing, and that on him and Lowell, in 
the general verdict of the class, was imposed the 
privilege of furnishing the poetry for the magazine 
and making it entertaining. Of course it was ex- 
pected that their year's " Harvardiana " would be 
better than those of any before. 

The five editors had the further privilege of as- 
suming the whole pecuniary responsibility for the 
undertaking. How this came out I do not know ; 
perhaps I never did. I do not think they ever 
printed three hundred copies. I do not think they 
ever had two hundred and fifty subscribers. The 
volume contains the earliest of Lowell's printed 
poems, some of which have never been reprinted, 
and a copy is regarded by collectors as one of the 
exceptionally rare nuggets in our literary history. 

When this choice of editors was made, I lived 
with my brother in Stoughton 22. In September, 
at the time when the first number was published, we 
had moved to Massachusetts 27, where I lived for 
two years. Lowell had always been intimate in our 
room, and from this time until the next March he 
was there once or twice a day. Indeed, it was a 
good editor's room, — we called it the best room 
in college ; and all of them made it their head- 
quarters. 



LITERAEY WORK IN COLLEGE 31 

Unfortunately for my readers, the daguerreotype 
and photograph had not even begun in their bene- 
volent and beneficent career. It was in the next 
year that Daguerre, in Paris, first exhibited his pic- 
tures. The French government rewarded him for 
his great discovery and published his process to the 
world. His announcements compelled Mr. Talbot, 
in England, to make public his processes on paper, 
which were the beginning of what we now call pho- 
tography. I think my classmate, Samuel Longfel- 
low, and I took from the window of this same room, 
Massachusetts 27, the first photograph which was 
taken in New England. It was made by a little 
camera intended for draughtsmen. The picture 
was of Harvard Hall, opposite. And the first por- 
trait taken in Massachusetts was the copy in this 
picture of a bust of Apollo standing in the window 
of the college library, in Harvard Hall. 

The daguerreotype was announced by Daguerre 
in January, 1839. He thus forced W. H. Fox Tal- 
bot's hand, and he read his paper on photographic 
drawings on January 31 of that year. This paper 
was at once published, and Longfellow and I worked 
from its suggestions. 

Rufus King afterwards won for himself distinc- 
tion and respect as a lawyer of eminence in Cin- 
cinnati. He was the grandson of the great Rufus 
King, the natural leader of the Federalists and of 
the North in the dark period of the reign of the 
House of Virginia. Our Rufus King's mother was 
the daughter of Governor Worthington, of Ohio. 
King had begun his early education at Kenyon 



32 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

College, but came to Cambridge to complete his un- 
dergraduate course, and remained there in the law 
school under Story and Greenleaf. He then re- 
turned to Cincinnati, where he lived in distinguished 
practice in his profession until his death in 1891. 
"His junior partners were many of them men in 
the first rank of political, judicial, and professional 
eminence. But he himself steadily declined all 
political or even judicial trusts until, in 1874, he 
became a member of the Constitutional Convention 
of Ohio. Over this body he presided. He did not 
shrink from any work in education. He was active 
in the public schools. He was the chief workman in 
creating the Cincinnati Public Library, and, as one 
of the trustees of the McMicken bequest, he nursed 
it into the foundation of the University of Cincin- 
nati. In 1875 he became Dean of the Faculty of the 
Law School, and served in that office for five years. 
Until his death he continued his lectures on Constitu- 
tional Law and the Law of Real Property. No citi- 
zen of Cincinnati was more useful or more honored." 

Lowell was with Mr. King in the Cambridge law 
school. 

Of the five editors, four became lawyers — so far, 
at least, as to take the degree of Bachelor of Laws 
at Cambridge. The fifth, George Warren Lippitt, 
from Rhode Island, remained in Cambridge after he 
graduated and studied at the divinity school. 

There were other clergymen in his class, who 
attained, as they deserved, distinction afterwards. 
Lowell frequently refers in his correspondence to 
Coolidge, Ellis, Renouf, and Washburn. Lippitt's 



LITERARY WORK IN COLLEGE 33 

articles in " Harvardiana " show more maturity, per- 
haps, than those of any of the others. He had 
entered the class as a sophomore, and was the old- 
est, I believe, of the five. For ten years, from 1842 
to 1852, he was a valuable preacher in the Unita- 
rian church, quite unconventional, courageous, can- 
did, and outspoken. He was without a trace of that 
ecclesiasticism, which the New Testament writers 
would call accursed, which is the greatest enemy of 
Christianity to-day, and does more to hinder it than 
any other device of Satan. In 1852 Lippitt sought 
and accepted an appointment as secretary of lega- 
tion to Vienna. He married an Austrian lady, and 
represented the United States at the imperial court 
there in one and another capacity for the greater 
part of the rest of his life. He died there in 1891. 
Charles Woodman Scates, also, like King and 
Lippitt, entered the class after the freshman year. 
There was a tender regard between him and Lowell. 
When they graduated, Scates went to South Caro- 
lina to study law. But for his delicate health, I 
think his name would be as widely known in the 
Southern states as Kufus King's is in the valley of 
the Ohio. I count it as a great misfortune that 
almost all of Lowell's letters to him, in an intimate 
and serious correspondence which covered many 
years, were lost when the house in Germantown was 
burned where he spent the last part of his life. 
Fortunately, however, Mr. Norton had made con- 
siderable extracts from them in the volume of 
Lowell's published letters. From one of these 
letters which has been preserved, I copy a little 



34 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

poem, which I believe has never been printed. 
Lowell writes : — 

" I will copy you a midnight improvisation, which 
must be judged kindly accordingly. It is a mere 
direct transcript of actual feelings, and so far 
good : — 

" What is there in the midnight breeze 

That tells of things gone by ? 
Why does the murmur of the trees 

Bring tears into my eye ? 
O Night ! my heart doth pant for thee, 
Thy stars are lights of memory ! 

" What is there in the setting moon 

Behind yon gloomy pine, 
That bringeth back the broad high noon 

Of hopes that once were mine ? 
Seemeth my heart like that pale flower 
That opes not till the midnight hour. 

" The day may make the eyes run o'er 
From hearts that laden be, 
The sunset doth a music pour 

Round rock and hill and tree ; 
But in the night wind's mournful blast 
There cometh somewhat of the Past. 

u In garish day I often feel 

The Present's full excess, 
And o'er my outer soul doth steal 

A deep life-weariness. 
But the great thoughts that midnight brings 
Look calmly down on earthly things. 

" Oh, who may know the spell that lies 

In a few bygone years ! 
These lines may one day fill my eyes 

With Memory's doubtful tears — 
Tears which we know not if they be 
Of happiness or agony. 



LITERARY WORK IN COLLEGE 35 

" Open thy melancholy eyes, 
O Night ! and gaze on me ! 
That I may feel the charm that lies 

In their dim mystery. 
Unveil thine eyes so gloomy bright 
And look upon my soul, O Night ! " 

"Have you ever felt this? I have, many and 
many a time." 

Of my dear brother, Nathan Hale, Jr., I will not 
permit myself to speak at any length. We shall 
meet him once and again as our sketch of Lowell's 
life goes on. It is enough for our purpose now 
that, though he prepared himself carefully for the 
bar, and, as a young man, opened a lawyer's office, 
the most of his life, until he died in 1872, was spent 
in the work of an editor. Our father had been an 
editor from 1809, and of all his children, boys and 
girls, it might be said that they were cradled in the 
sheets of a newspaper. 

My brother was the editor of the Boston " Mis- 
cellany " in 1841, where Lowell and Story of their 
class were his chief cooperators. From that time 
forward he served the Boston "Advertiser," fre- 
quently as its chief ; and when he died, he was one 
of the editors of " Old and New," his admirable 
literary taste and his delicate judgment presiding 
over that discrimination, so terrible to magazine 
editors, in the accepting or rejecting of the work 
of contributors. 

All of these five boys, or young men, were favor- 
ite pupils of Professor Edward Tyrrell Channing. 
When, in September, 1837, they undertook the 
publication of " Harvardiana," Lowell was eighteen, 



36 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

Hale was eighteen, Scates, King, and Lippitt but 
little older. 

With such recourse the fourth volume started. 
It cost each subscriber two dollars a year. I sup- 
pose the whole volume contained about as much 
" reading matter," as a cold world calls it, as one 
number of "Harper's Magazine." These young 
fellows' reputations were not then made. But as 
times have gone by, the people who " do the maga- 
zines " in newspaper offices would have felt a certain 
wave of languid interest if a single number of 
"Harper" should bring them a story and a poem 
and a criticism by Lowell ; something like this from 
William Story; a political paper by Rufus King; 
with General Loring, Dr. Washburn, Dr. Coolidge, 
and Dr. Ellis to make up the number. 

Lowell's intimate relations with George Bailey 
Loring began, I think, even earlier than their meet- 
ing in college. They continued long after his col- 
lege life, and I may refer to them better in another 
chapter. 

The year worked along. They had the dignity 
of seniors now, and the wider range of seniors. 
This means that they no longer had to construe 
Latin and Greek, and that the college studies were 
of rather a broader scope than before. It meant 
with these young fellows that they took more lib- 
erty in long excursions from Cambridge, which 
would sacrifice two or three recitations for a sea- 
beach in the afternoon, or perhaps for an evening 
party twenty miles away. 

Young editors always think that they have a great 




NATHAN HALE 



LITERARY WORK IN COLLEGE 37 

deal of unpublished writing in their desks or port- 
folios, which is of the very best type, and which, 
" with a little dressing over," will bring great credit 
to the magazine. Alas ! the first and second num- 
bers always exhaust these reserves. Yet in the case 
of " Harvardiana " no eager body of contributors 
appeared, and the table of contents shows that the 
five editors contributed much more than half the 
volume. 

Lowell's connection with this volume ought to 
rescue it from oblivion. It has a curiously old- 
fashioned engraving on the meagre title-page. It 
represents University Hall as it then was — before 
the convenient shelter of the corridor in front was 
removed. " Blackwood," and perhaps other maga- 
zines, had given popularity to the plan, which all 
young editors like, of an imagined conference be- 
tween readers and editors, in which the editors tell 
what is passing in the month. Christopher North 
had given an appetite among youngsters for this 
sort of thing, and the new editors fancied that 
" Skilly goliana," such an imagined dialogue, would 
be very bright, funny, and attractive. But the fun 
has long since evaporated ; the brightness has long 
since tarnished. I think they themselves found 
that the papers became a bore to them, and did not 
attract the readers. 

The choice of the title " Skilly goliana " was, with- 
out doubt, Lowell's own. " Skillygolee " is defined 
in the Century Dictionary in words which give the 
point to his use of it : "A poor, thin, watery kind 
of broth or soup . . . served out to prisoners in 



38 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

the hulks, paupers in workhouses, and the like ; a 
drink made of oatmeal, sugar, and water, formerly 
served out to sailors in the British navy." 

Here is a scrap which must serve as a bit of 
mosaic carried off from this half -built temple : — 

SKILL YGOLIANA — III. 

Since Friday morning, on each busy tongue, 

"Shameful ! " " Outrageous ! " has incessant rung. 

But what 's the matter ? Why should words like these 

Of dreadful omen hang on every breeze ? 

Has our Bank failed, and shown, to cash her notes, 

Not cents enough to buy three Irish votes ? 

Or, worse than that, and worst of human ills, 

Will not the lordly Suffolk take her bills ? 

Sooner expect, than see her credit die, 

Proud Bunker's pile to creep an inch more high. 

Has want of patronage, or payments lean, 

Put out the rushlight of our Magazine ? 

No, though Penumbra swears " the thing is flat," 

Thank Heaven, taste has not sunk so low as that ! 

. . . Has Texas, freed by Samuel the great, 

Entered the Union as another State ? 

No, still she trades in slaves as free as air, 

And Sam still fills the presidential chair, 

Rules o'er the realm, the freeman's proudest hope, 

In dread of naught but bailiffs and a rope. 

. . . What is the matter, then ? Why, Thursday night 

Some chap or other strove to vent his spite 

By blowing up the chapel with a shell, 

But unsuccessfully — he might as well 

With popgun threat the noble bird of Jove, 

Or warm his fingers at a patent stove, 

As try to shake old Harvard's deep foundations 

With such poor, despicable machinations. . . . 

Long may she live, and Harvard's morning star 

Light learning's wearied pilgrims from afar ! 

Long may the chapel echo to the sound 

Of sermon lengthy or of part profound, 

And long may Dana's gowns survive to grace 

Each future runner in the learned race ! 



LITERARY WORK IN COLLEGE 39 

I believe Lowell afterwards printed among his 
collected poems one or two which first appeared in 
H Harvardiana." Here is a specimen which I be- 
lieve has never been reprinted until now : — 

" Perchance improvement, in some future time, 
May soften down the rugged path of rhyme, 
Build a nice railroad to the sacred mount, 
And run a steamboat to the muses' fount ! 

Fain would I more — but could my muse aspire 
To praise in fitting strains our College choir ? 
Ah, happy band ! securely hid from sight, 
Ye pour your melting strains with all your might ; 
And as the prince, on Prosper's magic isle, 
Stood spellbound, listening with a raptured smile 
To Ariel's witching notes, as through the trees 
They stole like angel voices on the breeze, 
So when some strange divine the hymn gives out, 
Pleased with the strains he casts his eyes about, 
All round the chapel gives an earnest stare, 
And wonders where the deuce the singers are, 
Nor dreams that o'er his own bewildered pate 
There hangs suspended such a tuneful weight ! " 

From " A Hasty Pudding Poem" 

In the winter of the senior year the class made 
its selection of its permanent committees and of the 
orator, poet, and other officers for " Class Day/' 
already the greatest, or one of the greatest, of the 
Cambridge festivals. I do not remember that there 
was any controversy as to the selection of either 
orator or poet. It seemed quite of course that 
James Ivers Trecothick Coolidge, now the Rev. Dr. 
Coolidge, should be the orator; and no opposition 
was possible to the choice of Lowell as poet. 

Some thirty years later, in Lowell's absence from 
Cambridge, I had to take his place as president of 



40 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

a Phi Beta Kappa dinner at Cambridge. One of 
those young friends to whom I always give the pri- 
vilege of advising me begged me with some feeling, 
before the dinner, not to be satisfied with " trotting 
out the old war-horses/' but to be sure to call out 
enough of the younger men to speak or to read 
verses. I said, in reply, that the old war-horses 
were not a bad set after all, that I had Longfellow 
and Holmes and Joe Choate and James Carter and 
President Eliot and Professor Thayer and Dr. 
Everett on my string, of whom I was sure. But I 
added, " The year Lowell graduated we were as sure 
as we are now that in him was firstrate poetical 
genius and that here was to be one of the leaders 
of the literature of the time." And I said, "You 
know this year's senior class better than I do, and 
if you will name to me the man who is going to 
fill that bill twenty years hence, you may be sure 
that I will call upon him to-morrow." 

I like to recall this conversation here, because it 
describes precisely the confidence which we who 
then knew Lowell had in his future. I think that 
the government of the college, that " Faculty " of 
which undergraduates always talk so absurdly, was 
to be counted among those who knew him. I think 
they thought of his power as highly as we did. I 
think they did all that they could in decency to 
bring Lowell through his undergraduate course 
without public disapprobation. President Quincy 
would send for him to give him what we called 
" privates," by which we meant private admonitions. 
But Lowell somehow hardened himself to these, the 



LITERARY WORK IN COLLEGE 41 

more so because he found them in themselves easy 
to bear. 

The Faculty had in it such men as Quincy, 
Sparks and Felton, who were Quincy's successors; 
Peirce and Longfellow and Channing, all of them 
men of genius and foresight; and I think they 
meant to pull Lowell through. In Lowell's case it 
was simply indifference to college regulations which 
they were compelled to notice. He would not go to 
morning prayers. We used to think he meant to 
go. The fellows said he would screw himself up 
to go on Monday morning, as if his presence there 
might propitiate the Faculty, who met always on 
Monday night. How could they be hard on him, 
if he had been at chapel that very morning ! But, 
of course, if they meant to have any discipline, if 
there were to be any rule for attendance at chapel, 
the absence of a senior six days in seven must be 
noticed. 

And so, to the horror of all of us, of his nearest 
friends most of all, Lowell was " rusticated," as the 
old phrase was. That meant that he was told that 
he must reside in Concord until Commencement, 
which would come in the last week in August. It 
meant no class poet, no good-by suppers, no vacation 
rambles in the six weeks preceding Commencement. 
It meant regular study in the house of the Kev. 
Barzillai Frost, of Concord, until Commencement 
Day ! And it meant that he was not even to come 
to Cambridge in the interval. 

I have gone into this detail because I have once 
or twice stumbled upon perfectly absurd stories 



42 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

about Lowell's suspension. And it is as well to put 
your thumb upon them at once. Thus, I have 
heard it said that there was some mysterious offense 
which he had committed. And, again, I have heard 
it said that he had become grossly intemperate ; all 
of which is the sheerest nonsense. I think I saw 
him every day of his life for the first six months of 
his senior year, frequently half a dozen times a day, 
excepting in the winter vacation. He lived out of 
college; our room was in college, and it was a con- 
venient loafing place. Now, let me say that from 
his birth to his death I never saw him in the least 
under any influence of liquor which could be 
detected in any way. I never, till within five years, 
heard any suggestion of the gossip which I have re- 
ferred to above. There is in the letters boyish 
joking about cocktails and glasses of beer. But 
here there is nothing more than might ordinarily 
come into the foolery of anybody in college famil- 
iarly addressing a classmate. 

It is as well to say here that a careful examin- 
ation of the private records of the Faculty of the 
time entirely confirms the statement I have made 
above. 



CHAPTER IV 

CONCORD 

Concord was then and is now one of the most 
charming places in the world. But to poor Lowell 
it was exile. He must leave all the gayeties of the 
life of a college senior, just ready to graduate, and 
he must give up what he valued more — the freedom 
of that life as he had chosen to conduct it. He was 
but just nineteen years old. And even to the 
gravest critic or biographer, though writing after 
half a century, there seems something droll in the 
idea of directing such a boy as that, with his head 
full of Tennyson and Wordsworth, provoked that 
he had to leave Beaumont and Fletcher and Mas- 
singer behind him — to set him to reciting every day 
ten pages of " Locke on the Human Understanding " 
in the quiet study of the Rev. Barzillai Frost. So 
is it, — as one has to say that Lowell hated Concord 
when he went there, and when he came away he was 
quite satisfied that he had had a very agreeable visit 
among very agreeable people. 

Concord is now a place of curious interest to trav- 
elers, and the stream of intelligent visitors from all 
parts of the English-speaking world passes through 
it daily. It has been the home, first of all, of Emer- 
son and then of the poet Channing, of Alcott, of 



44 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

Thoreau, of Hawthorne, known by their writings to 
almost every one who dabbles in literature. It has 
been the home of the Hoars, father and sons, honored 
and valued in government and in law. Two rail- 
ways carry the stream of pilgrims there daily, and 
at each station you find two or three carriages ready 
to take you to the different shrines, with friendly, 
well-read " drivers " quite as intelligent as you are 
yourself, and well informed as to the interests which 
bring you there. 

But this page belongs to the last half-century. 
Lowell went to a quiet country village, the home of 
charming people, and a type of the best social order 
in the world ; but to him it was simply the place of 
his exile. Dear Charles Brooks of Newport, who 
loved every grain of its sand and every drop of its 
spray, used to say that St. John hated Patmos only 
because it was his prison. He used to say that John 
wrote of heaven, " There shall be no more sea," only 
that he might say, There shall be no chains there ; 
all men shall be free. Lowell looked on Concord as 
St. John looked on the loveliness of Patmos. His 
boyish letters of the time steadily called it his prison 
or the place of his exile. 

He was consigned, as has been said, to the over- 
sight and tuition of the Rev. Barzillai Frost, in whose 
house he was to make his home. Mr. Frost was a 
scholar unusually well read, who had been an in- 
structor in history in Harvard College, where he 
graduated in the year 1830. In our own time people 
are apt to say that Parson Wilbur, of the " Biglow 
Papers," represents Mr. Frost. I do not recollect that 



CONCORD 45 

this was said when they were published. But I dare 
say that the little details of Parson Wilbur's life, the 
constant reference to the College Triennial Catalogue 
and other such machinery, may have come from the 
simple arrangements of the Concord parsonage. Mr. 
Frost had no sense of congruity. He would connect 
in the same sentence some very lofty thoughts with 
some as absurd. He would say in a Thanksgiving 
sermon, " We have been free from the pestilence 
that walketh in darkness, and the destruction that 
wasteth at noonday ; it is true that we have had some 
chicken-pox and some measles." 

Imagine the boy Lowell, with his fine sense of 
humor, listening to Mr. Frost's sermon describing 
Niagara after he had made the unusual journey 
thither. He could rise at times into lofty eloquence, 
but his sense of truth was such that he would not go 
a hair's breadth beyond what he was sure of, for any 
effect of rhetoric. So in this sermon, which is still 
remembered, he described the cataract with real feel- 
ing and great eloquence. You had the mighty flood 
discharging the waters of the vast lake in a torrent 
so broad and grand — and then, forgetting the pre- 
cise statistics, he ended the majestic sentence with 
the words " and several feet deep." 

Lowell could not help entering into conflict with 
his tutor, but they were both gentlemen, and the 
conflicts were never quarrels. In one of the earliest 
letters he says : " I get along very well with Barzil- 
lai (your orthography is correct), or, rather, he gets 
along very well with me. He has just gone off to 
Boston to exchange, and left me in charge of the 



46 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

6 family.' The man's cardinal fault is that he de- 
lights to hear the sound of his own voice. When I 
recite Locke, he generally spends three quarters of 
the time in endeavoring to row up that delectable 
writer." To row up, in the slang of that time, 
meant to row an adversary up the Salt Eiver. The 
phrase was Western. " Sometimes I think that 
silence is the best plan. So I hold my tongue till 
he brings up such a flimsy argument that I can stand 
it, or sit it, no longer. So out I burst, with greater 
fury for having been pent up so long, like a simmer- 
ing volcano. However, both he and his wife try to 
make me as comfortable and as much at home as 
they can. ... I think it was Herder who called 
Hoffman's life a prolonged shriek of thirty volumes. 
Carlyle borrowed the idea, and calls Rousseau's life 
a soliloquy of — so long. Now I should call Bar- 
zillai's life one stretched syllogism. He is one of 
those men who walk through this world with a cursed 
ragged undersuit of natural capacity entirely con- 
cealed in a handsome borrowed surtout of other 
men's ideas, buttoned up to the chin." 

This bitterness came in early in the exile. In 
after times Lowell could speak of Mr. Frost more 
fairly. In speaking at Concord, on the celebration 
of the 250th anniversary of the incorporation of the 
town, he said : — 

" In rising to-day I could not help being reminded 
of one of my adventures with my excellent tutor 
when I was here in Concord. I was obliged to read 
with him c Locke on the Human Understanding.' 
My tutor was a great admirer of Locke, and thought 



CONCORD 47 

that he was the greatest Englishman that ever lived, 
and nothing pleased him more, consequently, than 
now and then to cross swords with Locke in argu- 
ment. I was not slow, you may imagine, to en- 
courage him in this laudable enterprise. Whenever 
a question arose between my tutor and Locke, I 
always took Locke's side. I remember on one oc- 
casion, although I cannot now recall the exact pas- 
sage in Locke, — it was something about continuity 
of ideas, — my excellent tutor told me that in that 
case Locke was quite mistaken in his views. My 
tutor said : ' For instance, Locke says that the mind 
is never without an idea ; now I am conscious fre- 
quently that my mind is without any idea at all.' 
And I must confess that that anecdote came vividly 
to my mind when I got up on what Judge Hoar 
has justly characterized as the most important part 
of an orator's person." 

Of Mrs. Frost, then a young mother with a baby 
two months old, he says : " Mrs. Frost is simply the 
best woman I ever set my eyes on. Always plea- 
sant, always striving to make me happy and com- 
fortable, and always with a sweet smile, a very 
sweet smile ! She is a jewel ! Then, too, I love 
her all the better for that she loves that husband of 
hers, and she does love him and cherish him. If she 
were not married and old enough to be my mother 
— no ! my eldest sister — I'd marry her myself as 
a reward for so much virtue. That woman has 
really reconciled me to Concord. Nay ! made me 
even almost like it, could such things be." 

By this time, the 15th of August, the poor boy, 



48 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

though robbed of his vacation, was coming round 
to see that there were few places in the world where 
one would more gladly spend the summer than the 
Concord of his time. 

But we must not look in the boy's letters for any 
full appreciation of Mr. Emerson. While he was 
at Concord Mr. Emerson delivered an address before 
the Cambridge divinity school which challenged the 
fury of conservative divines and was only shyly de- 
fended even by people who soon found out that 
Emerson is the prophet of our century. In one of 
Lowell's letters of that summer written before that 
address was printed, and before Lowell had heard 
a word of it, he says : " I think of writing a snub 
for it, having it all cut and dried, and then inserting 
the necessary extracts." 

I need not say that this was mere banter. But 
it shows the mood of the day. Privately, and to 
this reader only, I will venture the statement that 
if the most orthodox preacher who reads the " Ob- 
server " should accidentally " convey " any passage 
from this forgotten address into next Sunday's ser- 
mon in the First Church of Slabville, his hearers 
will be greatly obliged to him and will never dream 
that what he says is radical. For time advances in 
sermons, and has its revenges. 

Lowell speaks of Mr. Emerson as very kind to 
him. He describes a visit to him in which Lowell 
seems to have introduced some fellow - students. 
These were among the earliest of that endless train 
of bores who in forty years never irritated our Plato. 
But, alas ! Lowell's letter preserves no drop of the 



CONCORD 49 

honey which fell from Plato's lips. It is only a 
most amusing burlesque of the homage rendered by 
the four or five visitors. I may say in passing that 
the characteristics of the five men could hardly have 
been seized upon more vividly after they had lived 
forty years than they appear in the hundred words 
then written by this bright boy. 

In the address at Concord, delivered forty-seven 
years afterward, he said : — 

" I am not an adopted son of Concord. I cannot 
call myself that. But I can say, perhaps, that under 
the old fashion which still existed when I was young, 
I was ' bound out ' to Concord for a period of time ; 
and I must say that she treated me very kindly. 
... I then for the first time made the acquaintance 
of Mr. Emerson ; and I still recall, with a kind of 
pathos, as Dante did that of his old teacher, Bru- 
netto Latini, i La cara e buona imagine paterna,' 
'The dear and good paternal image/ which he 
showed me here ; and I can also finish the quotation 
and say, ' And shows me how man makes himself 
eternal.' I remember he was so kind to me — I, 
rather a flighty and exceedingly youthful boy — as 
to take me with him on some of his walks, partic- 
ularly a walk to the cliffs, which I shall never for- 
get. And perhaps this feeling of gratitude which 
I have to Concord gives me some sort of claim to 
appear here to-day." 

Under Barzillai's tuition he settled down to his 
college work. He had the class poem to write. 
As he was not to be permitted to deliver it, it may 
be imagined that he did not write it with much 



50 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

enthusiasm. He put it off, and he put it off. That 
was the way, it must be confessed, he sometimes 
met such exigencies afterward. 

July 8 he wrote: "Nor have I said anything 
about the poem. I have not written a line since 
my ostracism, and, in fact, doubt very much whether 
I can write even the half of one." It had been 
proposed that it should be read by some one else on 
Class Day; but to this Lowell objected, and the 
faculty of the college objected also. On the 23d 
he writes : " As for the poem, you will see the whole 
of it when it is printed, as it will be as soon as Scates 
gets back to superintend it. Do you know, I am 
more than half a mind to dedicate it to Bowen." 
Then on the 15th of August : " I have such a head- 
ache that I will not write any more to-night, though 
after I go to bed I am in hopes to finish my poem. 
Thinking does not interfere so much with a head- 
ache as writing." Then, on the next line : " August 
18. * The ■ poem ' is in the hands of the printer. I 
received a proof-sheet to-day from the i Harvardiana * 
press, containing the first eight pages." But in the 
same letter afterwards: "How under the sun, or, 
more appropriately, perhaps, the moon, which is, or 
appears to be, the muse of so many of the tuneful, 
I shall finish the poem I don't know. Stearns came 
up here last Saturday, a week ago to-day, and stirred 
me up about the printing of it, whereupon I began 
Sunday to finish it in earnest, and straightway 
scratched off about two hundred and fifty lines. 
But now I have come to a dead stand and am as 
badly off as ever, without so much hope. i Nothing 



• % ■■.;! 



SP© 1P3S® 


©E,A©^ ©2F '88, 


BY THEIR OSTRACIZED POET, (so. CALLED,) 




J. R. L. 


I. 




CHORUS. 


Classmates, farewell ! our journey's done, 

Our mimic life is ended, 
The last long year of study 's run, 

Our prayers their last have blended ! 




Then fill the cup ! fill high ! fill high ! 

Let joy our goblets crown, 
We '11 bung Misfortune's scowling eye, 

And knock Foreboding down ! 


CHORUS. 




IV. 


Then fill the cup ! fill high !. fill high ! 

Nor spare the rosy wine ! 
If Death be in the cup, we '11 die ! 

Such, death would be divine ! 




Fling out youth's broad and snowy sail, 
Life's sea is bright before us ! 

Alike to us the breeze or gale, 
So hope shine cheerly o'er us ! 


II. 




CHORUS. 


Now forward ! onward ! let the past 

In private claim its tear, 
For while one drop of wine shall last, 
. We '11 have no sadness here ! 




Then fill the cup ! fill high ! fill high ! 

And drink to future joy, 
Let thought of sorrow cloud no eye, 

Here 's to our eldest boy ! - 


"CHORUS. 




V, j 


Then fill the cup ! fill high ! fill high ' 

Although the hour be late, 
We '11 hob and nob with Destiny, 

And drink the health oT Fate T 


t 


Hurrah ! Hurrah ! we 're launched at last, 

To tempt the billows' strife ! 
We Ml nail our pennon to the mast, 

And Daee the storms of life ! 


III. 


- '* 


CHORUS. 

Then fill the cup ! fill high once more ! 

There 's joy on time's dark wave ; 
Welcome the tempest's angry roar ! 

'T is music to the brave. 

k 


What though Ill-luck may shake his fist, 

We heed not him or his, 
We 've booked our names on Fortune's list, 

So d — n his grouty phiz ! 



LOWELL'S POEM TO HIS COLLEGE CLASS 



CONCORD 51 

so difficult, etc., etc., except the end/ you know. 
And here I am, as it were, at the tail end of no- 
thing, and not a pillow of consolation whereon to 
lay the aching head of despair." 

These words are perhaps a fair enough description 
of the poem. It has in it a good deal of very crude 
satire, particularly a bitter invective against aboli- 
tionists who talked and did nothing. But the ode 
of the Cherokee warrior, bewailing the savage trans- 
fer of his nation which had been consummated 
under Andrew Jackson's rule, seems to be worth 
preserving. At the time, be it remembered, the 
poem was most cordially received by the Lilliput 
circle of Boston and Cambridge : — 

" Oh abolitionists, both men and maids, 
Who leave your desks, your parlors, and your trades, 
To wander restless through the land and shout — 
But few of you could tell us what about ! 
Can ye not hear where on the Southern breeze 
Swells the last wailing of the Cherokees ? 
Hark ! the sad Indian sighs a last adieu 
To scenes which memory gilds with brighter hue, 
The giant trees whose hoary branches keep 
Their quiet vigil where his fathers sleep, 
'Neath the green sod upon whose peaceful breast 
He too had hoped to lay him down to rest — 
The woods through whose dark shades, unknown to fear, 
He roamed as freely as the bounding deer, 
The streams so well his boyish footsteps knew, 
Pleased with the tossings of the mock canoe, 
And the vast mountains, round whose foreheads proud 
Curled the dark grandeur of the roaming cloud, 
From whose unfathomed breast he oft has heard 
In thunder-tones the good Great Spirit's word. 
Lo, where he stands upon yon towering peak 
That echoes with the startled eagle's shriek, 
His scalp-tuft floating wildly to the gale 
Which howls an answer to his mournful wail, 



52 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

Leaning his arm upon an unbent bow, 
He thus begins in accents sad and low : 

" * We must go ! for already more near and more near 
The tramp of the paleface falls thick on the ear — 
Like the roar of the blast when the storm-spirit comes 
In the clang of the trumps and the death-rolling drums. 
Farewell to the spot where the pine-trees are sighing 
O'er the flowery turf where our fathers are lying ! 
Farewell to the forests our young hunters love, 
We shall soon chase the deer with our fathers above ! 

" * We must go ! and no more shall our council-fires glance 
On the senate of chiefs or the warriors' dance, 
No more in its light shall youth's eagle eye gleam, 
Or the glazed eye of age become young in its beam. 
Wail ! wail ! for our nation ; its glory is o'er, 
These hills with our war-songs shall echo no more, 
And the eyes of our bravest no more shall look bright 
As they hear of the deeds of their fathers in fight ! 

" ' In the home of our sires we have lingered our last, 
Our death-song is swelling the moan of the blast, 
Yet to each hallowed spot clings fond memory still, 
Like the mist that makes lovely yon far distant hill. 
The eyes of our maidens are heavy with weeping, 
The fire 'neath the brow of our young men is sleeping, 
And the half-broken hearts of the aged are swelling, 
As the smoke curls its last round their desolate dwelling ! 

" * We must go ! but the wailings ye wring from us here 
Shall crowd your foul prayers from the Great Spirit's ear, 
And when ye pray for mercy, remember that Heaven 
Will forgive (so ye taught us) as ye have forgiven ! 
Ay, slay ! and our souls on the pinions of prayer 
Shall mount freely to Heaven and seek justice there, 
For the flame of our wigwams points sadly on high 
To the sole path of mercy ye 've left us — to die ! 

" * God's glad sun shone as warm on our once peaceful homes 
As when gilding the pomp of your proud swelling domes, 
And His wind sang a pleasanter song to the trees 
Than when rustling the silk in your temples of ease ; 




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CONCORD 63 

For He judges not souls by their flesh-garment's hue, 
And His heart is as open for us as for you ; 
Though He fashioned the Redman of duskier skin, 
Yet the Paleface's breast is far darker within ! 

" ' We are gone ! the proud Redman hath melted like snow 
From the soil that is tracked by the foot of his foe ; 
Like a summer cloud spreading its sails to the wind, 
We shall vanish and leave not a shadow behind. 
The blue old Pacific roars loud for his prey, 
As he taunts the tall cliffs with his glittering spray, 
And the sun of our glory sinks fast to his rest, 
All darkly and dim in the clouds of the west ! ' 

" The cadence ends, and where the Indian stood 
The rock looks calmly down on lake and wood, 
Meet emblem of that lone and haughty race 
Whose strength hath passed in sorrow from its place." 

The exile ended with the last week in August. 
" I shall be coming down next week, Thursday or 
Friday at farthest." 

Commencement fell that year on the 29th of 
August, and Lowell received his degree of Bachelor 
of Arts with the rest of his class. 

I believe it is fair to tell an anecdote here of that 
summer, because the one person who could be of- 
fended by it is himself the only authority for it, 
and he used to tell the story with great personal 
gusto. 

This cynic was in Eome that spring, where Dr. 
Lowell and Mrs. Lowell had been spending the 
winter. Indeed, I suppose if Dr. Lowell had been 
in Cambridge, the episode of rustication in Concord 
would never have come into his son's life. The 
cynic was one of those men who seem to like to say 
disagreeable things whenever they can, and he thus 



54 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

described, I think in print, a visit he made to Dr. 
Lowell : — 

" Dr. Lowell had not received his letters from 
Boston, and I had mine ; so I thought I would go 
and tell him the Boston news. I told him that the 
parts for Commencement were assigned, and that 
Ruf us Ellis was the first scholar and was to have the 
oration. But I told him that his son, James Lowell, 
had been rusticated and would not return to Cam- 
bridge until Commencement week ! And I told 
him that the class had chosen James their class 
poet. ' Oh dear ! ' said Dr. Lowell, c James pro- 
mised me that he would quit writing poetry and 
would go to work/ " 

I am afraid that most fathers, even at the end of 
this century, would be glad to receive such a pro- 
mise from a son. In this case, James Lowell cer- 
tainly went to work, but, fortunately for the rest of 
us, he did not " quit writing poetry." 



CHAPTER V 

BOSTON IN THE FORTIES 

I despair of making any person appreciate the 
ferment in which any young person moved who 
came into the daily life of Boston in the days when 
Lowell left college. I have tried more than once, 
and without the slightest success. But this reader 
must believe me that nobody was " indifferent " 
then/ even if he do not understand why. 

Here was a little community, even quaint in some 
of its customs, sure of itself, and confident in its 
future. Generally speaking, the men and women 
who lived in it were of the old Puritan stock. This 
means that they lived to the glory of God, with the 
definite public spirit which belongs to such life. 
They had, therefore, absolute confidence that God's 
kingdom was to come, and they saw no reason why 
it should not come soon. There were still some 
people, and one or two teachers in the pulpit and in 
what is technically called the religious press, who 
believed, or said they believed, that all men are born 
in sin and are incapable of good. But practically, 
and in general, the people of Boston believed in the 
infinite capacity of human nature, and they knew 
" salvation 's free," and " free for you and me." 

As a direct result of this belief, and of the cos- 



56 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

mopolitan habit which comes to people who send 
their ships all over the world, the leaders of this lit- 
tle community attempted everything on a generous 
scale. If they made a school for the blind, they 
made it for all the blind people in Massachusetts. 
They expected to succeed. They always had suc- 
ceeded. Why should they not succeed ? If, then, 
they opened a " House of Reformation," they really 
supposed that they should reform the boys and girls 
who were sent to it. Observe that here was a man 
who had bought skins in Nootka Sound and sold 
them in China, and brought home silks and teas 
where he carried away tin pans and jackknives. 
There was a man who had fastened his schooner to 
an iceberg off Labrador, and had sold the ice he cut 
in Calcutta or Havana. Now, that sort of men look 
at life in its possibilities with a different habit from 
that of the man who reads in the newspaper that 
stocks have fallen, who buys them promptly, and 
sells them the next week because the newspaper tells 
him that they have risen. 

With this sense that all things are possible to 
him who believes, the little town became the head- 
quarters for New England, and in a measure for the 
country, of every sort of enthusiasm, not to say of 
every sort of fanaticism. Thus, Boston, as Boston, 
hated abolitionism. The stevedores and longshore- 
men on the wharves hated a " nigger " as much as 
their ancestors in 1770 hated a " lobster." But, all 
the same, Garrison came to Boston to publish the 
" Liberator." There was not an " ism " but had its 
shrine, nor a cause but had its prophet. And, as in 



BOSTON IN THE FORTIES 57 

the rest of the world at that time, the madness was 
at its height which forms a " society " to do the work 
of an individual. People really supposed that if you 
could make a hundred men give each the hundredth 
part of his life to do something, the loose combina- 
tion would do more work than one stalwart man 
would do who was ready to give one whole life in 
devotion to the " cause." 

The town was so small that practically everybody 
knew everybody. " A town/' as a bright man used 
to say, " where you could go anywhere in ten min- 
utes." 

Cambridge was within forty-five minutes' walk of 
this little self-poised metropolis, and was really a 
part of it, in all " its busy life, its fluctuations, and 
its vast concerns " — and in its pettiest concerns as 
well. 

Lowell could talk with Wendell Phillips, or ap- 
plaud him when he spoke. He could go into Gar- 
rison's printing-office with a communication. He 
could discuss metaphysics or ethics with Brownson. 
He could hear a Latter-Day Church preacher on 
Sunday. He could listen whileJVEiller, the prophet 
of the day, explained from Kollin's history and the 
Book of Daniel that the world would come to an 
end on the twenty-first of March, 1842. He could 
lounge into the " Corner Bookstore," where James 
T. Fields would show him the new Tennyson, or 
where the Mutual Admiration Society would leave 
an epigram or two behind. Or he could hear Ever- 
ett or Holmes or Parsons or Webster or Silliman or 
Walker read poem or lecture at the " Odeon." He 



58 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

could discuss with a partner in a dance the moral 
significance of the Fifth Symphony of Beethoven in 
comparison with the lessons of the Second or the 
Seventh. Another partner in the next quadrille 
would reconcile for him the conflict of free will and 
foreknowledge. In saying such things, I am not 
inventing the instances. I could almost tell where 
the conversations were held. At Miss Peabody's 
foreign bookstore he could take out for a week 
Strauss' s " Leben Jesu," if he had not the shekels 
for its purchase, as probably he had not. Or, under 
the same hospitable roof, he could in the evening 
hear Hawthorne tell the story of Parson Moody's 
veil, or discuss the origin of the Myth of Ceres with 
Margaret Fuller. 1 Or, when he danced " the pasto- 
rale " at Judge Jackson's, was he renewing the 
memories of an Aryan tradition, or did the figure 
suggest, more likely, the social arrangements of the 
followers of Hermann ? Mr. Emerson lectured for 
him ; Allston's pictures were hung in galleries for 
him ; Mr. Tudor imported ice for him ; Fanny 
Elssler danced for him, and Braham sang for him. 
The world worked for him — or labored for him. 
And he entered into the labors of all sorts and con- 
ditions of men. 

In one of his letters to his friend Loring, written 
in October, 1838, he expresses a doubt whether he 
would continue his studies of law. " I have been 



1 Margaret Fuller was nine years older than Lowell. A good deal 
of her early life was spent in Cambridge; and his banter in the Fable 
for Critics, which was really too sharp, belongs, not to his man- 
hood's serious views, but to a boy's humor. 



BOSTON IN THE FORTIES 59 

thinking seriously of the ministry/' he writes ; " I 
have also thought of medicine — but there — still 
worse ! " But on the 9th of November " I went 
into town to look out for a place " — this means to 
see some of his friends "in business/' and to try 
mercantile life — " and was induced en passant to 
step into the United States District Court, where 
there was a case pending, in which Webster was one 
of the counsel retained. I had not been there an 
hour before I determined to continue in my profes- 
sion and study as well as I could." Observe that 
he is now nineteen years old, going on to twenty. 

I will not include Mr. Webster among the com- 
pany of Mr. Lowell's early friends, though the hour 
spent in the United States Court seems to have been 
a very important hour in his life. Who shall say 
what would have come had he "found a place," and 
begun on life by rising early, " sweeping out the 
store," filling and trimming the oil lamps, and then 
running the errands for some treasurer of a woolen 
factory or dealer in teas or spices ? Such was the 
precise experience of many of his young companions 
in college, who "elected," on graduation, to "go 
into business." 

Of the literary circles into which he was naturally 
introduced I will say something. First, of some of 
the men who, in practice, wrote the " North Ameri- 
can Keview " in those days — say for the ten years 
after he left college. Dr. John Gorham Palfrey 
was the editor, and Lowell would have called the 
men themselves the " Mutual Admiration Society." 
Most of them, I think, have recognized this name in 



60 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

their own correspondence. It was a club of five 
men, who liked to call themselves " The Five of 
Clubs." But they very soon earned this name of 
the Mutual Admiration Society, which I think was 
invented for them. 

Dr. Palfrey was living at Cambridge all through 
the period of Lowell's college and law-school life. 
He had been a member of the divinity Faculty until 
1839, and he assumed the charge of the " Review " 
in 1835. He had written for it as early as the fifth 
volume. A gentleman through and through, of 
very wide information, hospitable and courteous, he 
and the ladies of his family made his house in Di- 
vinity Avenue one of the few places where students 
of whatever school of the college liked to visit. I 
remember that one of my own classmates said, 
after making a Sunday evening call there, " Palfrey 
makes you think that you are the best fellow in the 
world — and, by Jove, he makes you think that he 
is the next best ! " He resigned his professorship 
about the time when he made the romantic voyage 
by which he emancipated more than forty slaves 
whom he had "inherited." Like most men with 
whom he lived, he had opposed the " abolitionists " 
with all his might, with pen and with voice. But 
he knew how to do the duty next his hand better 
than some men who had talked more about theirs. 

He was most kind to me, boy and man, and gave 
me instance on instance which showed that his un- 
flinching firmness in duty was accompanied with 
entire readiness to recognize the truth wherever he 
found it. All of us youngsters were enthusiastic 



BOSTON IN THE FORTIES 61 

about Carlyle. All of the " oldsters " turned up 
their noses — " such affectation of style/' " Ger- 
manisms picked up cheaply/' and so on. But he 
said he knew that the editor of the " North Ameri- 
can " must read the " French Ee volution/' and he 
said that if you had to read a book, a good way was 
to take it as your only reading when you had a long 
journey. Mark that you could not then write books 
on the way, as I am writing this. 

So he took his two volumes with him on this 
voyage of emancipation. And, before he came to 
Cincinnati, he had forgotten the eccentricities and 
was as eager as the youngest of us to praise the his- 
torian. I remember as well how, as he explained to 
my father his plans for the " North American Ee- 
view," he said he had secured Emerson to write, and 
that Emerson would let him have some of his lec- 
tures. He had taken care to provide, however, that 
these were to be from the historical lectures and not 
the speculative ones. If he had been pressed, I am 
afraid he would have been found to be of the large 
circle of those who in those days thought Emerson 
" a little crazy." 

Under this chief worked the Mutual Admiration 
Society — all older than Lowell. But with all of 
them, sooner or later, he became intimate. All of 
them are still remembered : Charles Sumner ; George 
Stillman Hillard, Sumner's law partner and, in 
earlier days, intimate friend; H. W. Longfellow; 
Cornelius Conway Felton, Greek professor at Cam- 
bridge, and afterwards president of the college; 
and Henry Eussell Cleveland. Longfellow knew 



62 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

that there were worlds outside of London and Edin- 
burgh, Boston and Cambridge, and their environs. 
We youngsters, from the proud advantage of the 
age of twenty or less, would have said that the rest 
of the Mutual Admiration Society, in the year 1840, 
did not suspect this. 

The " North American " had been founded after 
the " Monthly Anthology " had led the way, twelve 
years before. It was confessedly in imitation of the 
Edinburgh and London quarterlies, as the London 
Quarterly had confessedly imitated the Edinburgh* 
The original plan was a good one, and any young- 
sters of to-day who will revive the old quarterly may 
find that it meets a " felt want " again. Look at an 
old " Edinburgh " of Brougham's time and you will 
find an intelligent account of some forty books, 
which you will never read yourself, but which you 
want to know about. To tell the whole abject and 
bottom truth, you do not find exactly this thing 
in any English or American " Review " published 
in 1898. 

The " North American " had been under the 
charge of both Everetts — Edward and Alexander. 
Alexander Everett assumed the editorial direction 
on his return from Europe in 1830, and from him 
it passed into Dr. Palfrey's hands. I may say in 
passing that if I had at my bank the money which 
the Everetts and their family connections paid for 
establishing this national journal, with compound 
interest on the same, I could be living to-day in my 
palace at Newport, and entertaining the Duke of 
Edinburgh, the Bishop of London, and the Vicar- 



BOSTON IN THE FORTIES 63 

General of North America. Probably I am better 
off as I write in the somewhat dingy Albany station 
of the Delaware and Hudson Kailroad. This is a 
parenthesis, with the indulgence of my readers. 

We all read the " North American " regularly. 
As I have implied, we who were ten years younger 
than the Mutual Admiration Society made fun of 
it. We said that they could not review a book of 
poems without a prefatory essay on poetry. We 
said that Horace Walpole made their fortune ; that 
they would not publish a number without an article 
on Walpole. But I cannot now find more than 
three or four articles on Walpole or even his times 
in those years. 

The truth was that literature was not yet a pro- 
fession. The men who wrote for the " North 
American" were earning their bread and butter, 
their sheets, blankets, fuel, broadcloth, shingles, and 
slates, in other enterprises. Emerson was an excep- 
tion; and perhaps the impression as to his being 
crazy was helped by the observation that these 
" things which perish in the using " came to him in 
the uncanny and unusual channel of literary work- 
manship. Even Emerson printed in the "North 
American Review " lectures which had been deliv- 
ered elsewhere. He told me in 1849, after he had 
returned from England, that he had then never 
received a dollar from the sale of any of his own 1 
published works. He said he owned a great many 
copies of his own books, but that these were all the 
returns which he had received from his publishers. 
And Mr. Phillips told me that when, after " English 



64 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

Traits," published by him, had in the first six 
months' sales paid for its plates and earned a 
balance besides in Emerson's favor, Emerson could 
not believe this. He came to the office to explain 
to Mr. Phillips that he wanted and meant to hold 
the property in his own stereotype plates. And Mr. 
Phillips had difficulty in persuading him that he 
had already paid for them and did own them. 
Emerson was then so unused to the methods of 
business that Mr. Phillips had also to explain to 
him how to indorse this virgin check, so that he 
could place it at his own bank account. 

Mr. Phillips, then of the firm of Phillips & Samp- 
son, was Emerson's near connection by marriage ; 
Mrs. Phillips, a charming and accomplished lady, 
being Emerson's cousin on the Haskins side. 

To return to the " North American Review." The 
five young gentlemen whom I have named were all 
favorites in the best circles of the charming social 
life of that little Boston. I cannot see that their 
fondness for each other can have much affected 
their work for the " North American," for whatever 
they published appeared long after they had won 
their name. 

They were in the habit of looking in at what 
began to be called the " Old Corner Bookstore," 
which is still, as it was then, an excellent shop, where 
you find all the last books, the foreign magazines, 
and are sure of intelligent attention. The memory 
of modern man does not run back to the time when 
there was not a " bookstore " in this old building, 
which bears on its rough-cast wall the date of 1713. 



BOSTON IN THE FORTIES 65 

The antiquarians would tell us that on the same 
spot as early as 1634 there was the first " ordinary " 
in Boston. And it was just above here, under the 
sign of Cromwell's Head, that Colonel George Wash- 
ington and his elegant little troop made their home 
when that young Virginian visited Governor Shirley 
in 1756. 

The Corner Bookstore in that generation was the 
shop of Allen & Ticknor, and not long before there 
had appeared in the shop, as the youngest boy, 
James T. Fields, from Portsmouth, who was des- 
tined to be the friend of so many men of letters, and 
who has left behind him such charming memorials of 
his own literary life. It must be to Fields, I think, 
that we owe the preservation of the epigram which 
the Club made upon " In Menioriam." I will not 
say that the story did not improve as it grew older, 
but here it is in the last edition : — 

The firm, then Ticknor & Fields, were Tennyson's 
American publishers. They had just brought out 
" In Memoriam." One of the five gentlemen looked 
in as he went down town, took up the book, and 
said, " Tennyson has done for friendship what Pe- 
trarch did for love, Mr. Fields," to which Mr. Fields 
assented ; and his friend — say Mr. Hillard — went 
his way. Not displeased with his own remark, when 
he came to his office — if it were Hillard — he re- 
peated it to Sumner, who in turn repeated it to 
Cleveland, perhaps, when he looked in. Going home 
to lunch, Sumner goes in at the shop, takes up the 
new book, and says, " Your Tennyson is out, Mr. 
Fields. What Petrarch did for love, Tennyson has 



66 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

done for friendship." Mr. Fields again assents, and 
it is half an hour before Mr. Cleveland enters. He 
also is led to say that Tennyson has done for friend- 
ship what Petrarch has done for love ; and before 
the sun sets Mr. Fields receives the same suggestion 
from Longfellow, and then from Felton, who have 
fallen in with their accustomed friends, and look in 
to see the new books, on their way out to Cam- 
bridge. 

This story belongs, of course, to the year 1850. 
In 1841, when Lowell begins to be counted as a 
Bostonian, the Corner Bookstore was already the 
centre of a younger group of men who were earning 
for themselves an honorable place in American let- 
ters. I believe they were first brought together in 
the government of the Mercantile Library Associa- 
tion. This association started in a modest way to 
provide books and a reading-room for merchants' 
clerks. To a beginning so simple this group of 
young fellows, when hardly of age, gave dignity 
and importance. Under their lead the association 
established a large and valuable lending library, 
set on foot what were the most popular lectures in 
Boston, and kept up a well-arranged reading-room. 
It was virtually a large literary club, which occupied 
a building, the whole of which was devoted to books 
or to education. With the passage of two genera- 
tions much of the work which the association thus 
took in hand has devolved upon the Public Library 
and its branches and upon the Lowell Institute. 
The Mercantile Library has been transferred to the 
city and is administered as its South End Branch. 



BOSTON IN THE FORTIES 67 

The winter courses under the Lowell foundation 
take the place of the Mercantile courses, so that this 
association now shows its existence in a comfortable 
club-house in Tremont Street. 

In the ten years between 1840 and 1850 it was 
an important factor in Boston life. The initiative 
in its work was given by James T. Fields, Edwin 
Percy Whipple, Daniel N. Haskell, Warren Sawyer, 
Thomas J. Allen, George 0. Carpenter, Edward 
Stearns, and George Warren, who had at command 
the ready service of younger fellows among their 
companions, loyal to the interests of the club, and 
keeping up the best interests of society better than 
they knew. The club, engaged Webster, Everett, 
Choate, Sumner, Channing, Emerson, Holmes, and 
Winthrop to lecture to them, arranging for " hono- 
rariums " such as had never been heard of before. 

The group of officers whom I have named was in 
itself a little coterie of young fellows who were read- 
ing and talking with one another on the best lines of 
English literature. Fields and Whipple soon became 
known to the public by their own printed work. All 
the group were well read in the best English books 
of the time, and I think I am right in saying that 
the existence of such a group around him strength- 
ened Fields's hands, as he compelled the firm to 
which he belonged to introduce in America some of 
the lesser known English authors. In 1845 Thomas 
Starr King removed to Boston. His rare genius, 
insight, and marvelous power of expression gave him 
a welcome everywhere. In this little circle of the 
Mercantile Library managers he was the intimate 
friend of all. 



68 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

Older than either of these groups of men, there 
was a set of careful scholars in Boston whom I may 
distinguish as the historians. Dr. Palfrey once said 
to me that it was a sort of accident, as he thought, 
which turned the young literary men of Boston so 
much in the direction of history. The accident was 
that the two principal public libraries before 1850 
were the Library of the Historical Society, and that 
of the Boston Athenaeum, which was much larger. 
It so happened that in its earlier years the Athenseum 
collection was much strongest on the side of history. 
It also happened that in 1818 Mr. Israel Thorndike 
bought for Harvard College in one purchase the 
collection of early American authorities which had 
been made by Ebeling, a German collector in the 
first quarter of the century. This collection is still 
unrivaled. There was thus, so Dr. Palfrey said, a 
sort of temptation to young Bostonians to read and 
study American history. And it is almost fair to 
speak of the Boston " school of history " which was 
thus formed. 

I was a boy of eleven, reading to my mother on 
a summer afternoon, when my father brought into 
the room a black-haired, olive-complexioned, hand- 
some young man, and said : " Here is Mr. Bancroft, 
my dear ! The first volume of the History is fin- 
ished, and he has come in to talk about printing 
and publishers." This was the beginning of my 
acquaintance, I believe I may say friendship, with 
Mr. Bancroft, which lasted until he died in 1891. 1 

1 In the preface Bancroft says that he has formed the design of 
writing our history " to the present time." " The work will extend 



BOSTON IN THE FORTIES 69 

It is convenient to remember that he was as old as 
the century. In 1833, the time of which I speak, 
Prescott was already at work on "Ferdinand and 
Isabella." Sparks had edited the " Diplomatic Cor- 
respondence/' and was collecting the materials for 
his " Washington." Eichard Hildreth, who edited 
the Boston " Atlas," was preparing for his history 
of the United States. Palfrey in 1839 gave up his 
professorship at Cambridge that he might devote 
himself to the history of New England. Lothrop 
Motley is younger, but he published " Merry- 
mount" as early as 1848. I may add that the 
patriotic anniversary orations of both the Everetts 
are historical studies. Edward Everett, in particu- 
lar, had the historic sense and tact very delicately 
developed. Mr. Emerson once said of him that 
" for a man who threw out so many facts he was 
seldom convicted of a blunder." To which remark 
I will add that Mr. Emerson also is always accurate 
in his frequent references to American history. 

It seems best to attempt this sketch of the liter- 
ary surroundings of the life on which the young 
law student is now to enter. With every person 
who has been named, and, indeed, with almost 
everybody who had anything to do with letters in 
Boston, Lowell was personally acquainted; with 
many of them he was intimately acquainted. 

to four, perhaps five, volumes." In fact, four volumes carried him 
to 1776. When he died he had published twelve, which brought him 
to 1789. One volume of this series, which advances the history only- 
one year, followed its predecessor after two years. 



CHAPTER VI 

THE BROTHERS AND SISTERS 

There was an inner circle of companionship, in 
which Lowell enjoyed the entire love of all the oth- 
ers, some record of which is necessary if we would 
begin to understand even the outside of his life at 
that time. I find it hard to determine how far I 
shall put on paper the memories of this circle. I 
know very well that it is easy to say too little and 
easy to say too much. 

In college life, especially in their senior year, five 
of the young men in this company had lived at 
Cambridge in the closest intimacy. These were 
Lowell, William Wetmore Story, John Gallison 
King, William Abijah White, and my brother Na- 
than. There is no need of saying how this inti- 
macy grew up. White and King were cousins. 
Story and Lowell were both Cambridge boys, and 
had been at Wells's school together. Lowell and 
Hale were together in Alpha Delta and in " Har- 
vardiana." So far I need not try to distinguish 
this company from companies of college seniors 
such as many of my readers have known. 

But there was a distinction, unique so far as I 
have seen, in the fact that four of these young men 
had sisters of nearly their own age, all charming 



THE BROTHERS AND SISTERS 71 

young women, whose tastes, interests, and studies 
were precisely the same as their brothers', and 
whose complete intimacy and tender, personal, self- 
sacrificing love for each other was absolute. I am 
asked by a friend whom I consult with regard to 
this narrative to say, what I had not said at first 
but what is true, that they were of remarkable per- 
sonal beauty. No girls ever lived with one heart 
and one soul in more complete union and harmony 
than these five. They were Anna Maria White, 
who married Lowell ; Mary Story, who married 
George Ticknor Curtis ; Augusta Gilman King and 
Caroline Howard King, and Sarah Everett Hale. 
In their personal talk, in their constant letters, they 
spoke of themselves as " The Band." But I need 
not say that where there was such an intimacy as 
theirs, or where there was such an intimacy as their 
brothers', the brothers and the sisters were equally 
intimate. The home of each was the home of all. 
These homes were in Boston, Watertown, Cam- 
bridge, and Salem. Lowell was made as intimate 
in each of these homes as he was in his own father's 
house. Among all these ten there was the simplest 
and most absolute personal friendship. 

While the girls called this association " The 
Band," the boys were more apt to call it "The 
Club." Not that it ever had any place of meeting, 
any rules, any duties, or any other conditions of any 
club that was ever heard of; but that, generally 
speaking, where one of them was, there was an- 
other. If one had money, all had it. If one had a 
book, all had it. If one went to Salem to a dance, 



72 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

the probability was that all five went; what was 
certain was that two or three went. If, at the 
party, one of the young men was bored by a Ger- 
man savant or by a partner he could not leave, he 
made a secret signal, and one of the others came to 
the rescue. And so of their sisters. 

I am able to speak of the ladies of this group 
with the more freedom because four of them died 
in early life. Maria White married Lowell. Mary 
Story, afterwards Mary Curtis, died in May, 1848. 
Augusta King and my sister died unmarried. 

Whenever they met at Salem, they were sure to 
meet also Dr. John Francis Tuckerman, and his sis- 
ter, Jane Frances Tuckerman. I suppose any full 
catalogue of the Band, if one attempted such a 
thing, would include these two names. But Tuck- 
erman was not a classmate of Lowell's ; he was 
studying medicine while the others were studying 
law, and Lowell was not thrown into such personal 
intimacy with him as with the others. 

I am favored, by the person best competent to 
write, with a few reminiscences : — 

Dear E : You have asked me to write for 

you what I can remember of James Lowell's connec- 
tion with the Band of Brothers and Sisters. I will 
gladly try to do so, though it would be as impossible 
to produce on paper the charm of that brilliant 
circle as to catch a falling star and imprison it for 
future examination ! 

But perhaps I can make a picture for you of one 
of the Band meetings at my father's house, at which 



THE BROTHERS AND SISTERS 73 

James Lowell was present, which may give some 
faint idea of that gay group of friends. 

It is in April, 1842, and for weeks sounds of pre- 
paration have been echoing through the old house. 
Two beds are placed in each of the spacious bed- 
rooms, the larder is supplied with dainties, a feeling 
of expectation pervades the air, and a sense of gen- 
eral festivity is diffused through the house, which 
has put on its holiday dress to greet the coming 
guests. As they were all friends of James Lowell's 
at that time, perhaps a slight sketch of some of 
them may interest your readers. 

First, James himself, slight and small, with rosy 
cheeks and starry eyes and waving hair parted in 
the middle, very like Page's picture. He was very 
reserved in manner, much absorbed in his lady-love, 
and although his wit was always brilliant, it had 
not then ripened into the delightful humor of after 
days. He and his friend William Page, the artist, 
were at this time possessed with a divine fury for 
Shakespeare's Sonnets. The little book was for- 
ever in their hands, and happy were they when they 
could catch a stray brother or sister to listen to 
" just this one beauty," which usually was followed 
by twenty more ; and happy, too, was the brother 
or sister, for although James did not then read well, 
his voice being thin and without resonance, his 
youthful, loving enthusiasm cast a spell over his 
crooning, the charm of which nobody could resist. 1 

N. H., tall and graceful, perhaps the most highly 

i I have that little volume now, enriched with James's marks and 
annotations, and full of pleasant memories. 



74 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

gifted of that bright circle, dropping the diamonds 
of his polished wit in a languid, nonchalant manner, 
but capable of a rare awakening when the right 
moment came. 

W. W. S., versatile and vivacious, a capital 
mimic, an adept at bright nonsense and gay repar- 
tee. 

W. A. W. A good head and kind heart, always 
ready to cap a good story with a better, which in- 
variably began with, "I knew a man in Water- 
town," so that the man in Watertown came to be 
counted a regular member of the Band. 

J. G. K., the leader in the revels, lighting up 
every meeting with his peculiar racy vein of humor, 
and J. F. T., the beauty of the Band and the sweet- 
est singer of his time. 

And now, with the charming group of sisters, 
they have all arrived at "The King's Arms" (as 
they liked to call the cheerful old house) for a 
week's visit, and I will try to bring back one even- 
ing of that happy time. 

We were all in a peculiarly gay frame of mind, 
for a little plan, devised by the sisters to surprise 
and please James, had proved entirely successful. 
The " Year's Life " was just published, but had 
not been as warmly received by the public as we, 
with our esprit de corps, thought it deserved ; so it 
was arranged that when, on this evening, James, 
as usual, asked for music, one of the number (our 
prima donna) should sing one of his own songs, 
" From the closed window gleams no spark," * 

1 The Serenade. 




JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

From the crayon by William Page in the possession of Mrs. Charles F. Briggs, 
Brooklyn, N. Y. 






THE BROTHERS AND SISTERS 75 

adapted to a lovely old air. The song was a great 
favorite with both James and Maria, for whom it 
was written, and as the well-known words rang 
through the room, it was delightful to watch 
James's face. Surprise, pleasure, tremulous feeling, 
and finally a look of delight as he turned to Maria, 
flashed over it. He had been a member of the 
Band for only a short time (through his engage- 
ment to M. W.), and this friendly appreciation was 
doubly valued by both of them. 

In those days we always had a fourth meal at 
about ten o'clock, and after an evening of music 
and dancing, and a good time generally, we ad- 
journed to the dining-room, where, seated at the 
large round table, the great festivity began, and an 
unfailing flow of wit, sentiment, fun, and scintilla- 
tion was kept up into the small hours of the night. 
Sometimes James Lowell would be called upon for 
one of his two songs, " The Battle of the Nile," 
or "Baxter's Boys They Built a Mm." If " The 
Battle of the Nile " were chosen, we prepared for 
fun. The words were only, 

« The battle of the Nile, 
I was there all the while," 1 

in endless repetition, sung to a slow, droning tune. 
James had no voice and little ear, though he loved 
music. He would begin in a lifeless, indifferent 
manner, hardly raising his head, while we all sat 

1 The oldest form of this song is — 

" The siege of Belle Isle, 
I was there all the while." 
This carries it back as far as 1761. 



76 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

quietly round him. Presently W. S. would join 
with his deep bass, then a clear soprano or a tenor 
would be heard, and so on, one after another drop- 
ping in, until in the end the whole circle would be 
on their feet, singing at the top of their voices, 
James leading them with all the airs and graces of 
a finished conductor. Then James would call upon 
my father for his favorite song, — 

" In a mouldering cave where 
The wretched retreat, 
Britannia sat wasted with care. 
She wept for her Wolfe " — 

and at this point the whole party were expected to 
break out into dolorous weeping. Then came 
songs and glees, in the choruses of which we all 
heartily joined. Or M. W. would repeat " Bin- 
norie, oh Binnorie," or W. S. sing " A Life on the 
Ocean Wave," or some of the party sing and act 
for us the oratorio of the " Skeptic," with one 
awful chorus, " Tremble Whipstick," in which we 
were all expected to show violent signs of trembling 
fear. It was all nonsense, but delightful nonsense, 
the bubbling over of these gay young spirits. 

But this is only a sketch of the lighter hours of 
the Band. We had our serious times, when every- 
thing in heaven or on earth was discussed with the 
airy audacity that belongs to youth, when all the 
questions of the day — art, politics, poetry, ethics, 
religion, philosophy — were bowled down by our 
light balls, with easy certainty that we were quite 
able to settle the affairs of the world. There was 
great variety of character and opinion among us, 



THE BROTHERS AND SISTERS 77 

so that our discussions did not lack spice and vigor ; 
but for the short time he was with us, when wit 
met wit in the bright melee, there was no keener 
lance in rest among the "Knights of the Round 
Table " than James Lowell's. 



CHAPTER VII 



A MAN OF LETTERS 



Lowell first saw Maria White on the first of 
December, 1839. At the moment, I suppose, he did 
not know that it was preordained that they two 
should be one. Mr. Norton has hunted out an early 
letter of his which he wrote the day after that meet- 
ing : " I went up to Watertown on Saturday with 
W. A. White, and spent the Sabbath with him. . . . 
His sister is a very pleasant and pleasing young lady, 
and knows more poetry than any one I am acquainted 
with. I mean, she is able to repeat more. She is 
more familiar, however, with modern poets than with 
the pure wellsprings of English poesy." The truth 
is that their union was made in heaven, that it was 
a perfect marriage, that they belonged together and 
lived one life. She was exquisitely beautiful; her 
tastes and habits were perfectly simple ; her educa- 
tion, as I look back on what I know of it, seems to 
me as perfect as any education can be. Among 
other experiences which did her no harm, she was 
one of the frightened girls who fled from the Ursu- 
line Convent in Charlestown before it was destroyed 
by a mob, in 1834. Her mother was one of the 
most charming women who ever lived. A cluster 
of sisters, of all ages down to romping little girls, 




MARIA LOWELL * 

From the crayon by S. IV. Rowse, in the possession of Miss Georgina Lowell Putnam, 

Boston 



A MAN OF LETTERS 79 

young women of exquisite sensitiveness and character, 
and with such a training as such a mother would be 
sure to give, made the great Watertown house the 
most homelike of homes. In such a home Lowell 
found his beautiful wife, and they loved each other 
from the beginning. 

I remember, while I am writing these lines, that 
all the five young men spoken of in the last chapter 
entered their names, on graduating, on the books of 
the Law School. They spent more or less of the 
next eighteen months at Cambridge. Their inti- 
macy, however, did not spring from this. It might 
be said, indeed, that they all went to the Law School 
because they were intimate, rather than that they 
were intimate because they went to the Law School. 
Of the five, King only was a professional lawyer 
through his life. His honored father before him, 
John Glen King, of the Harvard class of 1807, a 
learned and scholarly man, had been a distinguished 
leader at the Essex bar. Story gave most of his life 
to letters and to art, but his earliest publication is a 
series of Law Eeports, and he afterwards published 
— in 1844 — a book on Contracts. My brother, 
after he opened his law office, was early turned away 
from his profession to the management of the "Daily 
Advertiser;" and White, who died at the age of 
thirty-six, before any of the rest of them, gave so 
much of his time to the temperance and anti-slavery 
reforms, and to political work, that he cannot be 
spoken of as a practicing lawyer. None of them 
are now living. 

With another classmate Lowell was on the most 



80 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

intimate terms — Dr. George Bailey Loring, since 
distinguished as the head of the Department of 
Agriculture in Washington. Loring studied medi- 
cine at the same time when Lowell went to the Law 
School; but Lowell frequently visited Loring's beau- 
tiful home in Andover, and from schooldays forward 
the similarity of their tastes brought them into almost 
constant correspondence in matters of literature. Dr. 
Loring was the son of the minister of Andover, and 
that gentleman and Lowell's father had been friends. 
For us now, this has proved singularly fortunate ; 
for Loring carefully preserved all his letters from 
Lowell, and Mr. Norton has selected from them many 
for publication, which throw valuable light upon 
these early days, in which Lowell really revealed 
everything to this friend. He was always frank to 
the utmost with his correspondents, and relied upon 
their discretion. He was never more annoyed than 
when a correspondent or an interviewer presumed 
upon this frankness in repeating, or half repeating, 
anything, where Lowell had relied on the discretion 
of a gentleman. Dr. Loring sympathized entirely 
with Lowell's growing determination to devote him- 
self to literary work, and this sympathy naturally 
encouraged him, as he broke off, sooner than he 
perhaps expected, from the practice of law. 

Lowell once wrote a funny story which he called 
" My First Client." I guess that at the bottom it 
was true. I think that when the painter who had 
painted his sign came in with his bill, Lowell thought 
for a moment that he had a client. Out of this he 
spun an amusing " short story." 



A MAN OF LETTERS 81 

This little sketch of his has, in itself, given the 
impression, perhaps, that he cared nothing about the 
law, and that his LL. B. on the college catalogue and 
his admission to the Suffolk bar were purely per- 
functory. It is true that he never practiced, and 
that before long he stopped paying office rent, and 
that his sign was taken down. But it is not true 
that he threw away the three years when he pre- 
tended to be studying for his profession. In those 
days the Massachusetts custom was that a young 
lawyer who sought the best studied for a year and a 
half at Cambridge under Story and Greenleaf, then 
spent as much time in a lawyer's office, and then 
entered at the bar after a formal examination. In 
this way Lowell spent three or four terms at Cam- 
bridge, and then he spent as much time in regular 
attendance in the office of his father's friend and 
parishioner, the Hon. Charles Greeley Loring, for 
many years a leader at the Boston bar. It is not 
difficult to trace the results of Lowell's faithful work 
in these three years in his after writing. Any 
person makes a great mistake who infers from the 
abandon of some of his literary fun that he did not 
know how to work, steadily and faithfully, better 
than the worst Philistine who was ever born. 

But the stars in their courses did not propose that 
he should be a chief justice, or a celebrated writer 
on torts, or that he should make brilliant pleas be- 
fore a jury. They had other benefits in store for 
the world. 

It is pathetic now to see how little welcome there 
was then for a young poet, or how little temptation 



82 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

for a literary career. It was thought a marvel that 
the first " New England Magazine " and the " North 
American Keview" should pay a dollar a page to 
their writers. In Longfellow's Life, as in Mr. Low- 
ell's early letters, you find notes of the " Knicker- 
bocker/' " Godey," and " Graham/' at Philadelphia, 
and the " Southern Literary," as willing to print 
what was good, but there is evidence enough that 
the writers wrote for fame in the intervals spared 
them from earning their bread and butter. Holmes 
speaks as if he should have lost caste in his profes- 
sion in those early days had he been known as a 
literary man. He even implies that Lowell himself 
dragged him back to his literary career. 

But better times for American letters or for the 
independent profession of literary men were at hand. 
"Graham's Magazine" and "Godey's Lady's Book" 
had achieved what was called a large circulation. 
Stimulated by their success, two young publishers in 
Boston, named Bradbury and Soden, determined to 
try a magazine in New England which should appeal 
for its support to the supposed literary class of the 
country, as Blackwood did, and, in America, the 
" Portfolio," the " Knickerbocker," and the " Liter- 
ary Messenger." But it was also to print fashion- 
plates, and so appeal to the women of the country, 
even if they did not care for literature. So it was 
to be called " The Boston Miscellany of Literature 
and Fashion." There were to be forty-six pages of 
literature, with a good steel engraving, in every 
number, and two pages of fashion, with a fashion- 
plate. 



A MAN OF LETTERS 83 

My brother was to be responsible for the literature, 
and somebody, I think in New York, for the fashion, 
with which^ the former had nothing to do. I re- 
member he had to explain this to Mrs. Stowe, whom 
he had asked to contribute. She had declined be- 
cause she had been shocked by a decolletee figure on 
one of these plates. Dear Mrs. Stowe, in her Eng- 
lish progress ten years afterwards, had an opportunity 
to reconcile herself with dresses much more pro- 
nounced. 

The "Atlantic" to-day calls itself a journal of 
literature, art, science, and politics. It does not 
undertake to reconcile fashion with literature. If 
Messrs. Bradbury and Soden had been questioned, 
they would have said, what was true, that there was 
no class of readers who could sustain creditably a 
purely literary magazine. The rate at which the 
poor "Knickerbocker" was expiring was evidence 
of this. But they would have said that there were 
a great many factory-girls in the country for whom 
there was no journal of fashion. They would have 
said that these girls could be relied upon to float the 
literary magazine, if in each number there was a 
love-story which they would be glad to read. And 
I remember that there was great glee in the count- 
ing-room when it was announced that a thousand 
copies of the new magazine had been sold in 
Lowell. 

My brother was very stiff about concessions to 
the fashionable side. Two pages might be fash- 
ion, and as bad fashion as the publishers wanted, 
but his forty-six pages were to be the best which he 



84 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

could command. After a few numbers had been 
issued, he made a negotiation with Duyckinck, the 
editor of the " Arcturus," by which the short-lived 
magazine was transferred to him. This gave him 
the help of some of the bright New Yorkers. They 
sent to him their accumulated manuscripts, and I 
then saw the handwriting of Elizabeth Barrett — 
Mrs. Browning — for the first time. Soon after this 
these young men in Boston made the personal ac- 
quaintance of their New York correspondents, and 
from that time began Lowell's close friendship with 
Mr. Charles F. Briggs. 

Of other writers rising to fame, who were secured 
for the " Miscellany," was Hawthorne, who, to the 
great pleasure of all of us, contributed the article 
" A Virtuoso's Collection." Lowell probably met 
him for the first time at Elizabeth Peabody's. Haw- 
thorne soon after married her charming sister. As 
a norm de plume for a great deal of his work, Haw- 
thorne assumed the French translation of his name. 
His stories in the "Democratic Review " of this time 
were attributed to " Monsieur d'Aubepine." Lowell 
says of him in his Concord address : " You would 
think me extravagant, I fear, if I said how highly I 
rate the genius of Hawthorne in the history of liter- 
ature. At any rate, Hawthorne taught us one great 
and needful lesson ; and that is, that our own past 
was an ample storehouse for the brightest works of 
imagination or fancy." 

It is interesting now to see that Walt Whitman, 
who then called himself Walter, had begun as early 
as this his literary career. 




CHARLES F. BRFGGS 



A MAN OF LETTERS 85 

The page of the " Miscellany " was an imitation 
as precise as possible of the page which Edward 
Moxon in London had adopted for several of his 
popular series. All these young men had read and 
enjoyed the first part of Browning's " Bells and 
Pomegranates/' which had appeared with Moxon's 
imprint in this form in 1842. 

I speak at this length of the " Miscellany," of 
which we print a facsimile of one page, because in 
that year Lowell really made his determination to 
lead a literary life. It was not the life of a poet 
simply, but a life of letters, to which from this 
time he looked forward. To the volume of the 
" Miscellany " published in 1842 he contributed 
the following : three articles on " Old English 
Dramatists," the two sketches " My First Client " 
and " Getting Up," and, in verse, the sonnet to 
Keats, " The Two," " To Perdita Singing," " Fan- 
tasy," " The Shepherd of King Admetus," and two 
unnamed sonnets. 

In the second number of the " Miscellany," under 
the date of December, 1841, appeared also the 
" Ode " which he afterwards thought worth re- 
printing in the collected edition of his works. One 
cannot but see in it a careful statement of his own 
hopes and resolves for his future. It was originally 
printed in stanzas of four lines ; as he recast it sub- 
sequently, the breaks between the stanzas disappear. 
The following characteristic verses show what was 
central in his thought and feeling at this time : — 

" This, this is he for whom the world is waiting 
To sing the beatings of its mighty heart. 



86 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

Too long hath it been patient with the grating 
Of scrannel-pipes, and heard it misnamed Art. 

M To him the smiling soul of man shall listen, 
Laying awhile its crown of thorns aside, 
And once again in every eye shall glisten 
The glory of a nature satisfied. 

" His verse shall have a great commanding motion, 
Heaving and swelling with a melody 
Learnt of the sky, the river, and the ocean, 
And all the pure, majestic things that be. 

" Awake, then, thou ! we pine for thy great presence 
To make us feel the soul once more sublime. 
We are of far too infinite an Essence 
To rest contented with the lies of Time. 

" Speak out ! and lo, a hush of deepest wonder 
Shall sink o'er all this many voiced scene, 
As when a sudden burst of rattling thunder 
Shatters the blueness of a sky serene." 

In a private note on the 8th of July he says of 
this Ode : " I esteem it the best I ever wrote." And 
he adds, " I find that my pen follows my soul more 
easily the older I grow. I know that I have a mis- 
sion to accomplish, and if I live I will do the work 
my Father giveth me to do." 

At the end of the year, when my brother resigned 
the management of the " Miscellany," Lowell and 
his friend Robert Carter ventured on the " Pioneer," 
which was to be a magazine of " literature and art." 
Fashion was thrown out of the window; and for 
illustrations, they began with some good pictures 
from Flaxman. 

Lowell was already engaged to be married to 
Miss White. Their lives were wholly bound up in 



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A MAN OF LETTERS * 87 

each other. He was writing to her charming letters 
in poetry and in prose, and she to him in letters as 
charming. They read together, they dreamed to- 
gether, they forecast the future together. In such 
a daily atmosphere it was natural that he should 
choose that future rightly. 

" Perhaps then first he understood 
Himself how wondrously endued." 

He knew what was in him. By this time he knew he 
could work steadily, and when he wrote in triumph, 

" I am a maker and a poet, 
I feel it and I know it," 

he wrote in that frank confidence in his future 
which his future wholly justified. 

In the fifth volume of the present series of the 
" New England Magazine " Mr. Mead has given us a 
charming article on the three numbers of the " Pio- 
neer." These numbers are now among the rarities 
most prized by American book collectors. And 
there is hardly a page of the " Pioneer " which one 
does not read with a certain interest, in view of 
what has followed. At the end of three numbers 
the journal died, because it had not subscribers 
enough to pay for it. It may be observed in this 
history of our early magazines that all these pub- 
lishers lived on what we may call placer gold-wash- 
ings, for nobody here had yet discovered the quartz 
rock of an advertising patronage. In the " Miscel- 
lany " and the " Pioneer " no enterprising advertiser 
assisted in the payment of the bills. There was not 
one advertisement in either. The English maga- 
zines printed advertisements long before. 



88 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

In Lowell's Introductory, written, as will be ob- 
served, when he was not yet twenty-four years old, 
he gives what Mr. Mead well calls a characteristic 
expression of those views of American literature 
which always controlled him afterward : " Every- 
thing that tends to encourage the sentiment of caste 
should be steadily resisted by all good men. But 
we do long for a natural literature. One green 
leaf, though of the veriest weed, is worth all the 
crape and wire flowers of the daintiest Paris milli- 
ners." The whole article is well worth study by 
the young critics now. 

It is rather funny to see, in these days, that 
Nathaniel Parker Willis, who then considered him- 
self as the leader of the young literature of America, 
gave this opinion of Lowell in reviewing the first 
number of the " Pioneer : " — 

"J. R. Lowell, a man of original and decided 
genius, has started a monthly magazine in Boston. 
The first number lies before us, and it justifies our 
expectation, — namely, that a man of genius, who is 
merely a man of genius, is a very unfit editor for a 
periodical." 

This remark of Willis is interesting now, since 
Lowell has proved himself perhaps the best literary 
editor whom the history of American journalism 
has yet discovered. It is just possible, as the 
reader will see, that Willis did not write this him- 
self. 

Lowell's connection with the " Pioneer " occupied 
him for the closing months of 1842 and the begin- 
ning of 1843. This was at a period when his eyes 



A MAN OF LETTERS 89 

troubled him badly. Writing from New York, he 
says : " Every morning I go to Dr. Elliott's (who, 
by the way, is very kind) and wait for my turn to 
be operated upon. This sometimes consumes a 
great deal of time, the Doctor being overrun with 
patients. After being made stone blind for the 
space of fifteen minutes, I have the rest of the day 
to myself." 

On the 17th of January he writes, " My eyes, 
having been operated on yesterday with the hiife, 
must be used charily ; " and again on the 22d he 
writes that he had had a second operation performed 
on the 20th. 

"Handbills of the ( Pioneer' in red and black, 
with a spread eagle at the head of them, face 
me everywhere. I could not but laugh to see a 
drayman standing with his hands in his pockets 
diligently spelling it out, being attracted thereto 
doubtless by the bird of America, which probably 
led him to think it the Proclamation of the Pre- 
sident, a delusion from which he probably did not 
awake after perusing the document." 

And on the 24th he says : " I can scarcely get 
through with one letter without pain, and every- 
thing that I write retards my cure, and so keeps me 
the longer here. But I love Keats so much that I 
think I can write something good about him. . . . 
If you knew how I am placed, you would not 
write me so. I am forbidden to write under pain 
of staying here forever or losing my eyes." And 
in the same letter, " I must not write any more." 

" Have you got any copy for the third number ? 



90 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

Do not ask any conservatives to write, for it will 
mar the unity of the magazine. We shall be surer 
of success if we maintain a uniform course and 
have a decided tendency either one way or the 
other. We shall at least gain more influence in that 
way." 

In New York he often met Willis personally, and 
the more he saw of him the better he liked him. 
I think this was what happened with most people 
who met Willis. It certainly was so with me. In 
personal intimacy the studied affectation of his 
printed work disappeared. It was studied, as al- 
most any one could guess without seeing him. 
Willis also was at this time under Dr. Elliott's care 
for treatment of his eyes. He told Dr. Elliott that 
Lowell had written the most remarkable poetry 
that had been written in this country, and that he 
was destined to be the brightest star that had yet 
risen in American literature. He told Lowell him- 
self that he was more popular and more talked 
about than any other poet in the land, and pro- 
mised him that he would help the " Pioneer " in 
every way. At this time Willis was as highly 
regarded by young people, especially by the sort 
of people who read magazines, as any literary man 
in America. 

Elizabeth Barrett, not yet married, had written 
for the Boston " Miscellany," and on the 20th of 
January Lowell acknowledges four poems from her. 1 

1 Seeing that Miss Barrett herself recognized the fact that these 
American magazine publishers were among the first people who ever 
paid her any money, it is sufficiently English that in the same vol- 



A MAN OF LETTERS 91 

There were but three numbers of the "Pioneer" 
published. It has been the fashion to speak of it 
in a pitying tone, as if it were a mere foolish enter- 
prise of two callow boys. Bat if between the num- 
bers or between the articles one reads, as I have 
done, the correspondence between Lowell and his 
" true friend and brother," Kobert Carter, one feels 
that the " Pioneer " failed of success only from a 
series of misfortunes. Looking back upon it now, 
it is easy to say that it needed capital for a begin- 
ning. Most things do in our modern world. It 
is clear enough in this case that the strongest 
reason for undertaking it was that Lowell lived 
and was at the beginning of his successful career. 
Without him there would have been no " Pioneer." 
Knowing this, when you find that through January 
and February he was prohibited from writing, that 
week after week he was submitting to operations on 
his eyes, and that he was in actual danger of perma- 
nent blindness, you cease to ask why the u Pioneer " 
died at the end of its third number, and you won- 
der, on the other hand, that it lived at all. 

When one remembers the currency which Lowell's 
volumes of essays have had from the very begin- 
ning, he reads with special interest more than 
amusement the following note from Miss White, 
who had seen the publisher, which is pathetic. It 
describes the persuasion necessary to induce any- 
time of her correspondence which contains her acknowledgment 
there is talk about "American piracy." One would like to know 
whether Mrs. Browning did not receive in the long run more money 
from American than from English publishers. 



92 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

body to attempt the bold venture of issuing the 
first in that remarkable series : — 

" I went to see Mr. Owen this afternoon, to talk 
to him about publishing James's prose volume. He 
expressed himself greatly pleased with the articles, 
but said he wished to wait until James's prose was 
better known to the public before he ventured upon 
it. Then I told him of the flattering notices of his 
' Old Dramatists ' that appeared at the time they came 
out, and of the lavish praise his prose style received. 
He said that changed the face of affairs wholly ; 
that if he were as sure of the public as himself he 
should not hesitate. He said he wished to see you 
and talk about it with you also." 

Let all young writers remember this, that the 
public knows what it wants, whether publishers are 
doubtful or no. I may add the remark, which I 
believe to be wholly true, of one of the most suc- 
cessful publishers of our day, " No one on earth 
knows, when a book is published, whether it will 
sell five thousand copies or not. But if five thou- 
sand copies are sold, nothing is more certain than 
that twenty-five thousand can be." 

Mr. Lowell and Miss White were married in the 
end of December, 1844, with the good wishes, I 
might say, of everybody. Among her other ex- 
quisite faculties she had a sense of humor as keen 
as his, and both of them would run on, in the fun- 
niest way, about their plans for economical house- 
keeping. Sheet-iron air-tight stoves had just come 
into being. I believe I never see one to this day 
without recollecting in what an amusing vein of 




3 * 

b w 

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a m 

g H 

sr o 

3. ^ 

P 3 

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S" O 



A MAN OF LETTERS 93 

absurd exaggeration she once showed, in her lively 
talk, how much they were going to save in the de- 
tail of domestic life by the use of that most unro- 
mantic bit of household machinery. 

" A Year's Life/' his maiden volume of poems, 
had been published in 1841, about the time of their 
engagement. We used to pretend that weeks in 
advance of the publication multitudes of young girls 
who took a tender interest in this most romantic of 
marriages walked daily from one to another of the 
half-dozen book-shops in little Boston to inquire if 
" A Year's Life " were ready, and thus to stimulate 
the interest and curiosity of booksellers and their 
clerks. I think that the larger publishers of to-day 
even would say that the sale was more than is to 
be expected from any new volume of short poems. 
This was, of course, only a retail sale in Boston 
and the neighboring towns. There was as yet no 
demand for " Lowell's Poems " in New York, Phila- 
delphia, or London. 

Seeing the future of the author's poetical reputa- 
tion, I think that young authors may be interested 
in reading the letter in which he first proposes 
modestly to print this book : — 

"I think, nay I am sure, that I have written 
some worthy things, and though I feel well enough 
pleased with myself, yet it is a great joy to us all to 
be known and understood by others. I do long for 
somebody to like what I have written, and me for 
what I have written, who does not know me. You 
and I were cured of the mere cacoethes imprimendi 
(Rufus) by our connection with ' Harvardiana : ' I 



94 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

think that so far we should be thankful to it, as it 
taught us that print was no proof of worthiness, and 
that we need not look for a movement of the world 
when our pieces were made known in print. 

" Now, if you will find out how much it would 
cost to print 400 copies (if you think I could sell so 
many ; if not, 300) in decent style (150 pages — 
less if printed closely), like Jones Very's book, for 
instance, I could find out if I could get an indorser. 
I should not charge less than $1 per vol. — should 
you ? I don't care so much for the style of print- 
ing as to get it printed in any way. 

" Jones Very's style would be good, too, because 
it might be printed by our old printers, and that 
would be convenient about the proofs." 

In the subsequent collections of his poems he 
omitted many of those which are in this pioneer 
volume. And for this reason, among others, the 
volume is in great demand among collectors. But 
it is easy to see that he had even then — two years 
only after the class poem — outgrown the crudities 
of younger days which we find in turning over 
" Harvardiana." There is serious purpose now, 
though it be expressed only in two or three words 
together. Some of these are the poems of a lover. 
Yes ! but they are also the poems of a serious young 
man who knows that there is duty next his hand, 
and who is determined, with God's help and with 
the help of her he loves best, to carry that duty 
through. 

The spirit of the book reflects thus the same 
sense of a mission to mankind which appears in 



A MAN OF LETTERS 95 

the letters which have been preserved from a full 
correspondence which he maintained with Heath, 
a young Virginian. Frank Heath, as his friends 
called him, graduated at Cambridge while Lowell 
was in the Law School, and a close intimacy had 
grown up between them. When Heath left college 
in August, 1840, he returned to Virginia. There 
is a careful letter from Lowell to him which has a 
curious interest now, in the light of the history 
which followed. Lowell begs him to lead the way 
and to make himself the typical man in the new 
history of Virginia by emancipating his own slaves 
and leading in the establishment of a new civiliza- 
tion there. In fact, Heath soon went to Europe, 
and was lost to his friends here for nearly twenty 
years in one or another German university. He 
returned to his own country in time to take a promi- 
nent post in the Confederate army, and I think he 
lost an arm in one of the battles of the rebellion. 

The publication of " A Year's Life " showed that 
Lowell was a poet. This was now beyond discus- 
sion. The papers in the "Miscellany" and the 
" Pioneer " now showed, what people in the little 
literary circles of America knew, that he wrote 
prose well and that he had more than an amateur's 
knowledge of the older English literature. He 
could work steadily and faithfully. 

In the autumn of 1843 and the winter of 1843- 
44, however, as has been said, he had trouble with 
his eyes, and he lived for some time in New York 
for their better treatment. Mrs. Lowell also, al- 
ways of delicate health, required a more genial 



96 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

climate than Elmwood or Watertown would give 
her. Her lungs were delicate, and after their mar- 
riage, to escape the harsh climate of Boston, they 
spent the winter of 18 11 1 5 in Philadelphia. It 
need not be said that in each city they made very 
near personal friends who felt and treasured the 
personal attraction of each of them, — an attraction 
which it is impossible to describe. 

In the same winter the Southern party in Con- 
gress and the speculators who had bought Texan 
bonds for next to nothing were engaged in driving 
through the last Congress of President Tyler's ad- 
ministration the "joint resolutions" by which Texas 
was annexed to the United States. There were no 
precedents for such annexation. What would seem 
the natural course in an agreement between two re- 
publics would have been a formal treaty between 
them. But it was known that no treaty for such a 
purpose could pass the United States Senate. It 
was determined, therefore, by the friends of annexa- 
tion, who had such support as Mr. Tyler and his 
Cabinet could give, that they would drive these 
" joint resolutions " through Congress. And this 
was done. The resolutions passed the Senate by a 
majority of one only. They passed the day before 
Mr. Tyler went out of office. Here was the first 
pitched battle in Congress on a definite national 
issue between the North and South since that defeat 
of the North in the Missouri Compromise which had 
so excited Charles Lowell the year after his son was 
born. The whole country, North and South, was 
wild with excitement, as well it might be. 




JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 
From a daguerreotype taken at Philadelphia in 1844 



A MAN OF LETTERS 97 

Lowell was ready to give himself to the side of 
freedom with his pen or with his voice. At this 
time he engaged in the service first of the " Liberty 
Bell/' an anti-slavery annual published in Boston, 
and afterwards of the " National Anti-Slavery Stand- 
ard." Mrs. Lowell also wrote for both journals. 

The u Standard " was a weekly journal of great 
originality and ability, published in New York un- 
der the auspices of one of the national anti-slavery 
societies. The editor was Sydney Howard Gay, 
afterwards so distinguished as a historian, and hold- 
ing all his life the most important trusts as a jour- 
nalist in New York. He worked with Bryant in the 
" Evening Post." He worked with Greeley in the 
" Tribune." It is not too late to hope that his me- 
moirs will be collected and published. They will 
throw a flood of light on points not yet fully re- 
vealed in the history of the twenty years which led 
up to the fall of Richmond and the emancipation of 
America. 

Most organs, so called, of a special philanthropy 
are narrow and bigoted, and so, by the divine law 
which rules narrowness and bigotry, are preemi- 
nently dull. Witness most missionary journals and 
all temperance journals, so far as this writer has ob- 
served. We owed it to Gay, I suppose, that the 
" Anti-Slavery Standard," while pitiless in its de- 
nunciation of slavery, was neither narrow, bigoted, 
nor dull. Lydia Maria Child's letters from New 
York, which were published in it once a week, are 
still remembered among editors. They give an 
ideal type for writing in that line, in a series of 



98 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

papers which may well be studied by young jour- 
nalists, for, though often imitated, they have never 
been equaled. They are the despair of " leading 
editors " who try to get such work done for them 
and never succeed. 

Lowell engaged himself to write regularly for the 
" Standard," and did so for some years. His prose 
papers in that journal have never been collected, 
but they would be well worth collection. And the 
poems he wrote at this time, sometimes political, but 
not always so, generally appeared in the " Stand- 
ard." The headquarters of the young people were 
now at Elmwood in Cambridge. Here their oldest 
children were born, and here their oldest child died. 
It was then that Maria Lowell wrote that charming 
poem which has been read with sympathetic tears in 
so many homes from which " the Good Shepherd " 
has called away one of his lambs. 

I have often heard it said that the " Biglow Pa- 
pers," which followed soon after, introduced Lowell 
in England, and I suppose it was so. You never can 
tell what they will like in England, or what they 
will not like. But this is clear, that, having little 
or no humor of their own, they are curiously alive 
for humor in others. And the dialect of the " Big- 
low Papers," which is no burlesque or exaggeration, 
but simply perfect New England talk, is in itself 
curious enough and suggestive enough to have in- 
troduced letters on any theme. 

Literary people in England still fancied that they 
were opposed to the principle of slavery, as, in truth, 
a considerable number of them were. And between 



A MAN OF LETTERS 99 

the outspoken abolitionists of America and those of 
England there was then a freemasonry tender and 
charming, though sometimes absurd and amusing. 
I suppose this first introduced the Biglow letters, 
with their rollicking fun, their absolute good sense 
and vigorous suggestions, into England. Once in- 
troduced, they took care of themselves, and went 
wherever there were readers of sense or even intelli- 
gence. They began in a spurt of fun about a little 
local passage in Massachusetts politics. 

" Fer John P. 
Robinson he 
Sez he wunt vote fer Guvnor B." 

The success of the first numbers naturally led 
Lowell to carry them further, and they became in 
the end an important factor in the anti-slavery pol- 
itics of New England. 

Meanwhile, as our next chapter will show, what 
we now look back upon as the " lecture system " was 
developing itself in the Northern States. With the 
ordinary stupidity of ecclesiasticism, most of the or? 
ganized churches had succeeded in shutting out 
from their services the ultra speakers on whatever 
question. They confined their sermons on Sunday 
to the decorous wish-wash in which average men 
treated in a harmless way subjects to which the peo- 
ple were indifferent. Speaking of the English pul- 
pit at the same period, under conditions not far dif- 
ferent, Jowett says : " Really, I never hear a sermon 
of which it is possible to conceive that the writer 
has a serious belief about things. If you could but 



100 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

cross-examine him, he would perjure himself every 
other sentence." The indifference with which wide- 
awake Americans, particularly of the younger gen- 
eration, regarded such preaching, resulted in the 
development of the " lyceum system " of the North. 
Of this I will speak in some detail in the next 
chapter. It is enough to say here that the or- 
ganized churches might thank themselves if they 
found, introduced into every community on week- 
days, the most radical views, and frequently by 
speakers who would not have pretended to address 
them on Sundays. I am trying not to travel outside 
the line which I have marked for myself in these 
papers ; but I do not pass that line when I say 
that a sort of indignation was aroused through the 
whole Northern community because the established 
church, in its various communions, was unwilling to 
devote itself to what was clearly its business, the 
fair discussion of the most important subject bearing 
on right and wrong which could possibly come be- 
fore any people. The reader will find some valu- 
able notes by Mr. Higginson, interesting of course, 
in " Cheerful Yesterdays." " All of which he saw, 
and much of which he was." 

I refer to this now not because Lowell was often 
engaged in lecturing as one of the anti-slavery 
speakers. It must be remembered that this book 
is not so much a history of his life, as an effort to 
show the circumstances which surrounded his life 
and which account for the course of it. In his 
weekly contributions to the press, whether in prose 
or in verse, he kept in touch with the men and 



A MAN OF LETTERS 101 

women who were quite in advance in forming the 
Northern or national sentiment of the crisis. 

The " Liberty Bell " and the " Standard/' with 
his bright and suggestive articles, went into the 
circles which summoned Parker and Phillips and 
Garrison to give them instruction or inspiration 
which they would have sought in vain from the 
more decorous pulpits of that day. So it happened 
that, although he did not " enter the lecture field " 
as early as some of his companions and friends 
in the anti-slavery cause, he was, in those years of 
the awakening, perfectly well known among those 
interested in that cause. 

In this connection it interests me to remember 
that the last time I saw his father, Dr. Lowell, was 
at the house in Elmwood in 1855. I went to him 
to ask for his assent and signature in a memorial 
relating to the freedom of Kansas, which was ad- 
dressed to what we then called " The Three Thou- 
sand New England Clergymen." I went to him 
because he was one of the oldest Congregational 
ministers in New England, and because he had al- 
ways deprecated the separation between the evan- 
gelical and liberal branches of that body. He sym- 
pathized heartily in what we were doing, signed his 
name at the head of our circular-letter, and then 
put his hand on my head, and in the most cordial 
and pathetic way gave me and our cause an old 
man's benediction. This, the reader should note, 
took place in the spring of 1855. 



CHAPTER VIII 

LOWELL AS A PUBLIC SPEAKER 

It will be as well to bring into one chapter such 
references to Lowell's work as a public speaker as 
may give some idea of the interest with which he 
was always heard, and, indeed, of his own evident 
enjoyment of the position of an orator. 

He spoke with absolute simplicity, with entire 
ease, and he really enjoyed public speaking. 

It was near the close of the first quarter of the 
century that what was called the " lyceum system " 
came into being in New England. It worked won- 
derfully well under the original plans. The institu- 
tion, as it may be called, or the habit, if you please, 
of lecturing and listening to lectures, was formed 
again, probably never to be abandoned in our com- 
munities. The method by which this was done in 
the New England towns worked well for a genera- 
tion. And Lowell, as a youngster starting on life, 
made some of his first addresses "under the 
auspices " of the old-fashioned lyceum committees. 

I am rather fond of saying, what nobody seems 
to care for excepting myself, that high among the 
causes which sent Winthrop's colony to Massachu- 
setts was the passion of such men as he to hear 
lectures on week-days. Now this was important. 



LOWELL AS A PUBLIC SPEAKER 103 

It means that the contest between the " left wing " 
and the " right wing " in the English Church turned 
largely on the wish of the more advanced clergy to 
speak in other pulpits than their own, and the greater 
wish of the Puritan people to hear them. Of course, 
if a bishop could shut up a man in his own pulpit, 
the influence of one of the Garrisons, or Phillipses, 
or Parkers, or Pillsburys of the day would be very 
much restricted. But so long as John Cotton could 
travel over half England, he was much more for- 
midable to Bishop Laud and the other people who 
directed the Establishment than he would have 
been if he had remained in his own pulpit in the 
Lincolnshire Boston. 

So there grew up for that generation the habit of 
a week-day lecture in the New England meeting- 
houses ; a habit preserved with more or less interest 
to the present day. But as time went by, these 
week-day lectures, so far as I recollect them, were 
little more than the repetition of sermons which had 
been preached on Sunday. Now, if there is any- 
thing dangerous anywhere for a lecturer's usefulness, 
it is a habit of repeating the average sermon. A ser- 
mon is one thing and a lyceum lecture is another. A 
lyceum lecture has one purpose, and a sermon ought 
to have another purpose. However this may be, the 
people of the generations of this century who did 
not much like to go to the " Thursday lecture " in 
Boston, or similar lectures in other towns, were very 
glad to hear the best speakers of the time. And 
they generally gave them more latitude than was to 
be found in the creed-bound churches of the time. 



104 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

I do not think I stray too far from our central 
subject if I take a few lines to speak of the value to 
the whole Northern community of this very curious 
system. To introduce such men as have been 
named above, and a hundred other men, some of 
them of equal prominence in our history, and all 
of them of a certain ability as public speakers, — to 
introduce such men to the average community of 
the North, so that it knew them personally, was in 
itself a great achievement. To go back to the com- 
parison which I have made already, these Peter the 
Hermits, passing from place to place, preached a 
crusade. They were in very much the position of 
John Cotton and those other Puritan lecturers whom 
Bishop Laud and the Star Chamber disliked in Eng- 
land. And the history of the twenty years before 
our Civil War is not rightly written unless it refers 
to the effect which was wrought by such speakers. 
Phillips, Parker, Ward Beecher, and even Garrison, 
would have been little known outside a small circle 
around their respective homes but for this lecturing 
practice. 

There will be found in Lowell's letters and in 
other memoranda of the time an occasional joke 
about the external hardships of the thing. He 
speaks somewhere of three " committeemen,' ' with 
three cold hands like raw beefsteak, welcoming him 
and bidding him good-by. But such little jokes 
as this must not give a false idea of the reception 
which was given to the pioneers of larger thought 
than that which the hidebound churches of the 
time were willing to interpret. For one such story 



LOWELL AS A PUBLIC SPEAKER 105 

of the beefsteak hands there could be told a thou- 
sand stories of warm welcomes into charming fami- 
lies, and of immediate mutual recognition of people 
of kindred thought who would never have seen each 
other's faces but for the happy appointment which 
brought one as a lecturer to the other as " commit- 
teeman." Anything that taught the separated peo- 
ple of this country that it was a country, that they 
were citizens of the same nation, and that they had 
each other's burdens to bear, was of great value in 
those days. The reader of to-day forgets that in 
the same years in which South Carolina was defy- 
ing the North, Massachusetts gave directions that 
the national flag should not float over her State 
House. That is to say, in those days there was an 
intense sensitiveness which kept men of different 
sections of the country apart from each other. 
Anything which overcame such sensitiveness, and 
brought real lovers of their country and lovers of 
God face to face, was an advantage. In this case 
the advantage can hardly be overestimated. 

To this hour the popular lecture in America dif- 
fers from the lecture, so called, which the Useful 
Knowledge Society of England, and what they used 
to call Mechanics' Institutes, established there in 
the earlier part of the century. Mr. Emerson told 
me that when he delivered his lectures in London, 
intelligent people went back to Coleridge's morning 
lectures, of a dozen or more years before, as a pre- 
cedent. And you see in the accounts of Carlyle's 
London lectures that it was regarded as a novelty 
that anything should be said at a lecture which 



106 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

decently intelligent people needed to hear. But in 
October, 1843, Emerson wrote to his friend John 
Sterling, " There is now a ' lyceum,' so called, in 
almost every town in New England, and if I would 
accept an invitation I might read a lecture every 
night." Sterling had written to him not long be- 
fore, " I doubt whether there are anywhere in Brit- 
ain, except in London, a hundred persons to be 
found capable of at all appreciating what seems to 
find, as spoken by you, such ready acceptance from 
various bodies of learners in America." Such peo- 
ple meet, in their moribund feudal fashion, "to 
encourage the others," as Sir Walter Vivian looked 
on the experiments in his own park, or as Murat 
charged at Borodino. The amusing condescension, 
so often observable in the English pulpit, is even 
more marked in the English " popular lecture." 

But, in the beginning, it was not so here. As 
early as 1814 Jacob Bigelow had lectured on botany 
in Boston, and, not long after, Edward Everett on 
Greek art and antiquities, and Henry Ware on the 
Holy Land, in courses of lectures, which were at- 
tended by the very best and most intelligent people. 
And when Waldo Emerson, and Theodore Parker, 
and Wendell Phillips, and James Lowell lectured in 
the same region, they gave the best they could give, 
and no one thought he condescended in going to 
hear. 

I do not forget a bright saying of Starr King, 
one of those best worth hearing of the brilliant 
group of traveling lecturers of whom Lowell was 
one. King said that a popular lyceum lecture 



LOWELL AS A PUBLIC SPEAKER 107 

was made of five parts of sense and five of non- 
sense. " There are only five men in America/ ' 
said he, "who know how to mix them — and I 
think I am one of the five." Other people thought 
so too, and did not detect the nonsense. His care- 
fully wrought lectures are worth anybody's study 
to-day. 

He is the author of another lyceum chestnut. 
Some one asked him what his honorarium was for 
each lecture. "F. A. M. E.," said he — "Fifty 
And My Expenses." 

Lowell's hearers got no nonsense. His subjects 
were generally literary or critical — I think always 
so. On one or more expeditions he went to what 
was then the Far West — speaking in Wisconsin, I 
observe, within twenty years after Black Hawk and 
Keokuk addressed Americans on the same fields. 

(Ah me ! Why did I not accept forty acres of 
land between the lakes in Madison, Wisconsin, when 
they were offered me in 1842? The reader will 
perhaps pardon this digression !) 

Of such a system of Wander jahre in the educa- 
tion of a country, not the least benefit is that which 
is gained by the speaker. No man knows America 
who has not traveled much in her different regions. 
A wise United States Senator proposed lately that 
each newly elected member of Congress should be 
compelled to travel up and down his own country 
for those mysterious months after his election before 
he takes his seat. The men who have had such a 
privilege do not make the mistakes of book-trained 
men. 



108 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

A good enough illustration of some of the deeper 
consequences of what may be called the lyceum 
movement may be found in the story often told of 
the divided committee who met Wendell Phillips in 
a place where he was quite a stranger. On his ar- 
rival he asked what was the subject he was to speak 
on. Should he read his lecture on the Lost Arts, 
or should he deliver an address on Anti-Slavery? 
It proved, alas ! that the committee was equally 
divided, perhaps bitterly divided, and neither side 
would yield to the other. Phillips at once made the 
determination with his own prompt wit. He said 
he would deliver the lecture on the Lost Arts first, 
and then the Anti-Slavery address afterwards for 
any who wanted to stay and hear. Of course, after 
they had heard him, everybody stayed, and so he 
had the whole town to hear his radical appeal, where 
otherwise he would have had only that half the town 
which was convinced already. 

Under a law which may be called divine, the stu- 
dents, in all colleges where they had the choice of 
anniversary orators, always elected the speakers 
who, as they thought, would be most disagreeable 
to the college government. So Emerson, Parker, 
and Phillips came to be favorite college speakers in 
colleges where the faculties would gladly have sup- 
pressed all knowledge of the men. Mr. Emerson's 
address at Dartmouth in 1838 would never have 
been delivered but for the action of this law. This 
address, when printed, lying on the counter of a 
book-shop in Oxford, gave to Gladstone his first 
knowledge of the New England Plato. 



LOWELL AS A PUBLIC SPEAKER 109 

It is amusing now, and in a way it is pathetic, to 
see how this youngster Lowell, even before he was 
o£ age, caught at the floating straw of a Lyceum 
engagement whenever he could, in the hope of earn- 
ing a little money. This was simply that he felt 
the mortification which every bright boy feels when, 
after being told that he is a man by some college 
authority, he finds that he is still living in his 
father's house, eating at his father's table, wearing 
clothes which his father pays for, and even asking 
his father for spending-money. There is a note 
from him to Loring to ask if the "Andover Ly- 
ceum" will pay as much as five dollars for a lecture. 

The reader must understand that in the " Lyceum 
system," so called, it was considered as a sort of 
duty for educated men to have on hand a lecture or 
two which they were willing to read to any audience 
which was willing to ask them. This was, by the 
way, in precise fulfillment of that somewhat vague 
commission which constitutes the degree of a Master 
of Arts. The person who is fortunate enough to 
receive this diploma is told that he has the privilege 
of " speaking in public as often as any one asks him 
to do so." This is my free translation of " publice 
profitendi." Those words never really meant 
u public profession." In our modern days we are a 
little apt to take this privilege without the permis- 
sion of the university. 

Educated men accepted such appointments as 
their contribution to public education. It was just 
as the same men served on the school committee or 
board of selectmen, and would have been insulted 



110 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

if anybody had proposed to pay them anything for 
doing it. In many cases, perhaps in most cases, no 
tickets were bought or sold. The selectmen gave 
the Town Hall for a lyceum, or the First Parish 
gave the use of its meeting-house for a lyceum, as 
they would have done for a temperance meeting or 
a missionary meeting. But, of course, it soon ap- 
peared that if the audiences were to have continuous 
courses of lectures, somebody must be paid for them, 
and somebody must pay. College professors were 
engaged to give elementary courses on scientific or 
historical subjects. As early as 1832 Mr. Emerson 
delivered a course of biographical lectures at the 
request of the Massachusetts Society for Diffusing 
Useful Knowledge. And in the years of the 30's 
in Boston there were maintained through the winter 
public courses almost every evening in the week, by 
at least five different organizations — the Society for 
Diffusing Useful Knowledge, the Boston Lyceum, 
the Mercantile Library Association, the Mechanics' 
Association, and sometimes the Historical Society. 
For all these courses tickets were sold at low rates, 
but for enough to enable the societies to pay the 
lecturers a small honorarium. From such arrange- 
ments as these the custom spread of recompensing 
the lecturer for his work ; and at this moment, in 
an average New England town, people will not go 
to a lecture if they think the lecturer has " given " 
his service. The public thinks that if not worth 
pay, it is not worth hearing. 

In this arrangement of the lyceum, Lowell found 
his place before he was of age. He was always an 



LOWELL AS A PUBLIC SPEAKER 111 

easy and a ready speaker, and, as I have said, he 
enjoyed public speaking. Before long, his interest 
in the temperance reform and the anti-slavery re- 
form brought him occasionally on the platform. He 
spoke with perfect ease. On such occasions he 
spoke without notes, never speaking without know- 
ing what he had to say, and always saying it. But 
I think he never delivered a lecture, as he would 
have called it, without a manuscript written out in 
full. 

The first account he gives of his public speaking 
is that of the celebration of the Cambridgeport 
Women's Total Abstinence Society on the Fourth 
of July, 1842. " There were more than three thou- 
sand in all, it was said. I was called out, and made 
a speech of about ten minutes, from the top of a 
bench, to an audience of two thousand, as silent as 
could be. I spoke of the beauty of having women 
present, and of their influence and interest in re- 
forms. I ended with the following sentiment: 'The 
proper place of woman — at the head of the pil- 
grims back to purity and truth.' In the midst of 
my speech I heard many demonstrations of satisfac- 
tion and approval — one voice saying, i Good ! ' in 
quite an audible tone. I was told that my remarks 
were ' just the thing.' When I got up and saw the 
crowd, it inspired me. I felt as calm as I do now, 
and could have spoken an hour with ease. I did 
not hesitate for a word or expression even once." 

Alas ! the Boston papers of the day had Mr. 
Tyler's " third veto " to print, and the news from 
England by a late arrival; and no word could be 



112 JAMES EUSSELL LOWELL 

spared for poor James's first essay. What saith the 
Vulgate? "Nullum prophetam in actis diurnis 
honorari." 

As it proved, he was brought face to face with 
large numbers of persons who would otherwise never 
have seen him, by delivering lectures in various 
courses through the Northern and Northwestern 
States ; but this did not begin until a period as late 
as 1855. What I have said of his easy speaking is 
the remark of a person who heard him, as I have 
often heard him. I never spoke with any one who 
had heard him who did not say the same thing. 
But he himself did not always feel the sort of confi- 
dence in his power in this way which would have 
seemed natural. I am told by many persons who 
had to introduce him upon such occasions, that he 
would be doubtful and anxious about his power with 
an audience before he began. And he was exces- 
sively sensitive about any accident by which he for- 
got a word or in any way seemed to himself to have 
tripped in his discourse. 

In 1853 he was invited to deliver a course of lec- 
tures before the Lowell Institute. These lectures 
were eventually delivered in January and February 
of 1855. 

Because the great system of public instruction 
which is carried on by this Institute bears the name 
of his family, I will give some little account of it 
here. Stimulated by the success of what we have 
been speaking of, the lyceum system of the North- 
ern States, John Lowell, Jr., a cousin of James 
Russell Lowell, had founded this Institute. His 




JOHN LOWELL, JR. 
From a painting by Chester Harding, in the possession of Augustus Lowell, Boston 



LOWELL AS A PUBLIC SPEAKER 113 

wife and all his children had died. His own health 
was delicate, and he undertook a long journey 
abroad. While in Egypt he made his will, in which 
he left $250,000 for the beginning of a fund for 
carrying on public instruction by means of lectures. 
It is said that it was executed literally under the 
shadow of the ruins of Luxor. 

By this instrument he left to trustees the sum 
which has been named, the interest of which should 
be expended for maintaining free public lectures for 
the instruction of any who should choose to attend. 
The will provided that nine tenths of the income 
should be thus expended for the immediate purposes 
of every year. The remaining tenth is every year 
added to the principal fund. The investments have 
been carefully and successfully made, and as the will 
went into effect in the year 1839, the fund is now 
very much larger than it was when he died. 

It has been admirably administered from the 
beginning. The first Americans in the walks of 
science or of literature have been proud to be 
enrolled on the list of its lecturers, and in many 
instances the most distinguished savants from Eu- 
rope have been called over with the special purpose 
of lecturing to its audiences. 

Before 1855 Lowell was, I may say, universally 
known and universally admired. The announce- 
ment that he was to deliver a course of twelve 
lectures on English poetry was gladly received in 
Boston. It proved at once that it would be neces- 
sary to repeat the lectures in the afternoons for a 
new audience of those who could not enter the hall 



114 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

in the evening. But in both afternoon and evening 
courses multitudes were turned away for whom there 
was no room in the hall. A much larger "audi- 
ence" was made up by the people who read the 
lectures from day to day in the newspaper. My 
father and brother, who then conducted the " Daily 
Advertiser/' arranged with Mr. Lowell that his old 
friend Mr. Robert Carter should prepare the manu- 
script for that paper, and thus the "Advertiser" 
printed each lecture on the day after its second de- 
livery, with the omission only of some of the extracts 
from the poets of whom he was speaking. 

These reports were carefully preserved by some 
scrap-book makers, and from one of the scrap-books 
thus made the Rowfant Club of Cleveland printed 
an elegant limited edition in 1897. 

I borrow from another the description of Mr. 
Lowell's manner as a speaker in delivering these 
and similar addresses. This writer, who is not 
known to me, says, first, that Mr. Lowell never imi- 
tates the stump speaker and never falls into the 
drollery of the comedian. "His pronunciation is 
clear and precise ; the modulations of his voice are 
unstudied and agreeable, but he seldom if ever 
raised a hand for gesticulation, and his voice was 
kept in its natural compass. He read like one who 
had something of importance to utter, and the just 
emphasis was felt in the penetrating tone. There 
were no oratorical climaxes, and no pitfalls set for 
applause." 

The subjects of the twelve lectures are these : 1. 
Definitions. 2. Piers Ploughman's Vision. 3. The 




< ^ 



LOWELL AS A PUBLIC SPEAKER 115 

Metrical Eomances. 4. The Ballads. 5. Chaucer. 
6. Spenser. 7. Milton. 8. Butler. 9. Pope. 10. 
Poetic Diction. 11. Wordsworth. 12. The Func- 
tion of the Poet. 

It is no wonder that the lectures were so popular. 
They are of the best reading to this day, full of 
fun, full of the most serious thought as well. And 
you find in them at every page, I may say, seeds 
which he has planted elsewhere for other blossoms 
and fruit. For instance, here is his description of 
a New England spring : — 

" In our New England especially, where May-day 
is a mere superstition and the May-pole a poor, half- 
hardy exotic which shivers in an east wind almost 
as sharp as Endicott's axe — where frozen children, 
in unseasonable muslin, celebrate the floral games 
with nosegays from the milliners, and winter reels 
back, like shattered Lear, bringing the dead spring 
in his arms, her budding breast and wan, dilustered 
cheeks all overblown with the drifts and frosty 
streaks of his white beard — where even Chanti- 
cleer, whose sap mounts earliest in that dawn of the 
year, stands dumb beneath the dripping eaves of his 
harem, with his melancholy tail at half-mast — one 
has only to take down a volume of Chaucer, and 
forthwith he can scarce step without crushing a 
daisy, and the sunshine flickers on small new leaves 
that throb thick with song of merle and mavis." 

We find much of this again in the " Biglow 
Papers ; " perhaps the prose is better than the verse. 
Indeed, you have only to turn over the pages to 
find epigrams of which you might make proverbs. 



116 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

" Fortunately for the ballad-makers, they were not 
encumbered with any useless information." " The 
ballads are pathetic because the poet did not try to 
make them so ; and they are models of nervous and 
simple diction, because the business of the poet was 
to tell his story and not to adorn it." " The only 
art of expression is to have something to express. 
We feel as wide a difference between what is manu- 
factured and what is spontaneous as between the 
sparkles of an electrical machine and the wildfire of 
God which writes i Mene, Mene, 9 on the crumbling 
palace walls of midnight cloud." "Even Shake- 
speare, who comes after everybody has done his 
best, and seems to say, ' Here, let me take hold a 
minute and show you how to do it,' could not mend 
that." 

Let no one suppose, because these lectures are 
thus delivered to what is called a popular audience, 
that there is anything slight in the work or super- 
ficial in the handling. Lowell was not the man to 
slight his work because he had an audience of the 
people, or to treat the rank and file with more 
superficial consideration than the men with epaulets 
or sashes. Even if he had been, when he delivered 
one of these courses of lectures he had before him 
his full share of the leaders of that community, men 
and women to whom even a Philistine would not 
dare bring the work of a slop-shop. 

A good deal of the thought of these lectures ap- 
pears, as I have said, in other forms in some of his 
later publications. But, for whatever reason, he 
never made a separate book of them. I think he 



LOWELL AS A PUBLIC SPEAKER 117 

says somewhere in a private letter that he wanted to 
do it, and indeed had meant to do it, but that he 
could not make the time ; and that this was a fair 
excuse any one will say who knows how steadily he 
worked and how much work he had to do in study, 
in teaching, in writing and proof-reading, and, in 
after life, in his diplomatic duties. 

In 1874 Mr. Lowell was chosen the President of 
the Harvard Society of Alumni, and from 1863 to 
1871 he was President of the Phi Beta Kappa of 
Cambridge. It is worth observing that no other 
President of the Phi Beta has ever held that 
position so long. His immediate predecessor was 
Judge Hoar, and his successor Richard Henry Dana. 
These two societies exist chiefly to provide for the 
annual dinners of Cambridge graduates at the Col- 
lege on Commencement Day and the day following. 
The fine charm of the Phi Beta dinner is that it is 
not expected or permitted that anything that is said 
shall be reported. You may look for the most 
bubbling fun of some of the most serious men in 
the world, without any terror of seeing it bewitched 
and reflected the next morning from the cracked 
mirror of some ignorant boy who, when he reads 
his notes, can see no difference between Voltaire 
and Valkyrie. But the Commencement dinners, 
the day before the Phi Beta dinners, are open to the 
reports of all men, angels, and devils, so that some 
of the sparks of Lowell's infinite fun may, with 
proper grinding, be thrown upon the kodak still. 

He officiated as President of the Alumni in 1875 
and 1876. Those years, as the centennial years of 



118 JAMES EUSSELL LOWELL 

the early Revolutionary events, kept every one on 
the alert as to New England history. Here is a 
short extract from each of these addresses : — 

" But, gentlemen, I will not detain you with the 
inevitable suggestions of the occasion. These sen- 
timentalities are apt to slip from under him who 
would embark on them, like a birch canoe under 
the clumsy foot of a cockney, and leave him floun- 
dering in retributive commonplace. I had a kind of 
hope, indeed, from what I had heard, that I should 
be unable to fill this voice-devouring hall. I had 
hoped to sit serenely here, with a tablet in the wall 
before me inscribed : ' Guilielmo Roberto Ware, 
Henrico Van Brunt, optime de Academia meritis, eo 
quod facundiam postprandialem irritam fecerunt.' 
[The reader must recognize here the distinguished 
architects of Memorial Hall, which was then newly 
built.] I hope you understood my Latin, and 
I hope you will forgive me the antiquity of the 
pronunciation, but it is simply because I cannot 
help it. Then, on a blackboard behind me, I could 
have written in large letters the names of our 
guests, who should make some brave dumb show of 
acknowledgment. You, at least, with your united 
applause, could make yourselves heard. If brevity 
ever needed an excuse, I might claim one in the 
fact that I have consented, at short notice, to be 
one of the performers in our domestic centennial 
next Saturday, and poetry is not a thing to be de- 
livered on demand without an exhausting wear upon 
the nerves. When I wrote to Dr. Holmes and 
begged him for a little poem, I got the following 



LOWELL AS A PUBLIC SPEAKER 119 

answer, which I shall take the liberty of reading. 
I do not see the Doctor himself in the hall, which 
encourages me to go on : — 

" ' My dear James, — Somebody has written a note 
in your name, requesting me to furnish a few verses 
for some occasion which he professes to be inter- 
ested in. I am satisfied, of course, that it is a for- 
gery. I know you would not do such a thing as ask 
a brother writer, utterly exhausted by his centennial 
efforts, to endanger his health and compromise his 
reputation by any damnable iteration of spasmodic 
squeezing. So I give you fair warning that some 
dangerous person is using your name, and taking 
advantage of the great love I bear you, to play 
upon my feelings. Do not think for a moment that 
I hold you in any way responsible for this note, 
looking so nearly like your own handwriting as for 
a single instant to deceive me, and suggesting the 
idea that I would take a passage for Europe in sea- 
son to avoid college anniversaries.' 

" I readily excused him, and I am sure you will 
be kind enough to be charitable to me, gentlemen. 
I know that one of the things which the graduates 
of the College look forward to with the most confi- 
dent expectation and pleasure is the report of the 
President of the University. I remember that when 
I was in the habit of attending the meetings of the 
faculty, some fourteen or fifteen years ago, I was 
very much struck by the fact that almost every field 
of business that required particular ability was sure 
to gravitate into the hands of a young professor of 
chemistry. The fact made so deep an impression 



120 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

upon me that I remember that I used to feel, when 
our war broke out, that this young professor might 
have to take the care of one of our regiments, — 
and I know he would have led it to victory. And 
when I heard that the same professor was nominated 
for President, I had no doubt of the result which 
we have all seen to follow. I give you, gentlemen, 
the health of President Eliot, of Harvard College ! " 

Holding the same honorable though honorary 
office the next year, before introducing the speakers, 
he said : — 

" The common consent of civilized mankind seems 
to have settled on the centennial commemoration of 
great events as leaving an interval spacious enough 
to be impressive and having a roundness of comple- 
tion in its period. We are the youngest of nations, 
and the centuries to us are not yet grown so cheap 
and so commonplace as Napoleon's, when he saw 
forty of them looking down in undisguised admira- 
tion upon his armies bronzed from their triumphs in 
Italy. For my own part, I think the scrutiny of 
one age is quite enough to bear, without calling in 
thirty-nine others to its assistance. It is quite true 
that a hundred years are but as a day in the life of 
a nation, are but as a tick of the clock to the long 
train of aeons in which this planet hardened itself for 
the habitation of man and man accommodated him- 
self to his habitation ; but they are all we have, and 
we must make the best of them. Perhaps, after all, 
it is no such great misfortune to be young, especially 
if we are conscious at that time that youth means 
opportunity and not accomplishment. I think that, 



LOWELL AS A PUBLIC SPEAKER 121 

after all, when we look back upon the hundred years 
through which the country has passed, the vista is 
not so disheartening as to the indigestive fancy it 
might at first appear. If we have lost something of 
that Arcadian simplicity which the French travelers 
of a hundred years ago found here, — perhaps be- 
cause they looked for it, perhaps because of their 
impenetrability by the English tongue, — we have 
lost something also of that self-sufficiency which is 
the mark as well of provincials as of barbarians, and 
which is the great hindrance to all true advancement. 
It is a wholesome symptom, I think, if we are begin- 
ning to show some of the talent for grumbling which 
is the undoubted heirloom of the race to which most 
of us belong. Even the Fourth of July oration is 
changing round into a lecture on our national short- 
comings, and the proud eagle himself is beginning to 
have no little misgiving as to the amplitude between 
the tips of his wings. But while it may be admitted 
that our government was more decorously adminis- 
tered one hundred years ago, if our national house- 
keeping to-day is further removed from honest 
business principles, and therefore is more costly, 
morally and financially, than that of any other 
Christian nation, it is not less true that the hun- 
dredth year of our existence finds us, in the mass, 
very greatly advanced in the refinement and culture 
and comfort that are most operative in making a 
country civilized and keeping it so." 

On three occasions, at least, Lowell substituted 
for a prose lecture a poem to which he gave the 
name of " The Power of Sound." It is constructed 



122 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

on the simple system which runs back as far as 
" The Pleasures of Imagination/' giving us, for 
instance, the " Pleasures of Hope " and the " Plea- 
sures of Memory." In these prehistoric days of 
which I write, it was what you rather expected in a 
college poem : a convenient thread on which to 
string the beads which might else have been lying 
unused in box or basket. 

Lowell gave the original copy of this poem to 
Mr. Norton, who edited it carefully with interesting 
notes for an elegant edition of a few copies printed 
by Mr. Holden. Some of the lines and several of 
the illustrations in other forms were used by him 
elsewhere, and may be found in his published 
poems : — 



" Steps have their various meanings — who can hear 
The long, slow tread, deliberate and clear, 
The boot that creaks and gloats on every stair, 
And the firm knock which says, * I know you 're there,' 
Nor quake at portents which so oft before 
Have been the heralds of the ten-inch bore ? 

" He enters, and he sits, as crowners sit, 
On the dead bodies of our time and wit ; 
Hopes that no plan of yours he comes to balk, 
And grinds the hurdy-gurdy of his talk 
In steady circles, meaningless and flat 
As the broad brim that rounds a bishop's hat. 
Nature, didst thou endow him with a voice, 
As mothers give great drums to little boys, 
To teach us sadly how much outward din 
Is based on bland vacuity within ? 

" Who, untouched, could leave 
Those Hebrew songs that triumph, trust, or grieve ? 
Verses that smite the soul as with a sword, 



LOWELL AS A PUBLIC SPEAKER 123 

And open all the abysses with a word ? 
How many a soul have David's tears washed white, 
His wings borne upward to the Source of light ! 
How many his triumph nerved with martyr-will, 
His faith from turmoil led to waters still ! 
They were his songs that rose to heaven before 
The surge of steel broke wild o'er Marston Moor, 
When rough-shod workmen in their sober gear 
Rode down in dust the long-haired cavalier ; 
With these once more the Mayflower's cabin rang, 
From men who trusted in the God they sang, 
And Plymouth heard them, poured on bended knees, 
From wild cathedrals arched with centuried trees. 
They were grim men, unlovely — yes, but great — 
Who prayed around the cradle of our State. 
Small room for light and sentimental strains 
In those lean men with empires in their brains, 
Who their young Israel saw in vision clasp 
The mane of either sea with taming grasp; 
Who pitched a state as other men pitch tents, 
And led the march of time to great events. 

" O strange new world, that yet wast never young, 
Whose youth from thee by tyrannous need was wrung, 
Brown foundling of the forests, with gaunt eyes, 
Orphan and heir of all the centuries, 
Who on thy baby leaf-bed in the wood 
Grew'st frugal plotting for to-morrow's food; 
And thou, dear Bay State, mother of us all, 
Forget not in new cares thine ancient call ! 

" Though all things else should perish in the sod, 
Hold with firm clutch thy Pilgrim faith in God, 
And the calm courage that deemed all things light 
Whene'er the inward voice said, ' This is right!' 
If for the children there should come a time 
Like that which tried the fathers' faith sublime 
(Which God avert !), if Tyranny should strive 
On limbs New-England-made to lock her gyve, 
Let Kansas answer from her reddened fields, 

* 'T is bastard, and not Pilgrim blood, that yields ! ' " 

Until his death, his well-earned reputation as a 



124 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

public speaker made constant calls on him for ser- 
vice in such directions. But no lover of Lowell will 
suppose that lecturing to large audiences or to small 
was much more than an " avocation " with him. 
The " Fable for Critics/' the " Biglow Papers/' and 
other books belong to years when he was hard at 
work as a college professor. His contributions to 
the journals which were influential in reform still 
continued, though not so frequent as before. 



CHAPTER IX 

HARVARD REVISITED 

The happiness of Lowell's happy home was shat- 
tered by the death of his wife, October 27, 1853. 
He spent the summer of the next year at Beverly, 
on the seashore of Massachusetts, in the summer of 
1855 went again to Europe, and returned in 1856. 
He at once resumed his residence at Cambridge, 
and, with the opening term of the autumn, entered 
heartily and energetically on his duty as " Smith 
Professor." 

For there was once a gentleman named Abiel 
Smith. He is wholly unknown to fame. But I 
wish at this late moment to express the gratitude, 
hitherto never fitly spoken, of thousands upon thou- 
sands of those whom he has blessed. He left to 
Harvard College, as early as 1815, the foundation 
for the Smith Professorship of the Modern Lan- 
guages. 

He was himself a graduate of Harvard College in 
the year 1764, " went into business," as our New 
England phrase has it, and became rich, as that 
word was used in those early days. He is spoken 
of by Mr. Quincy as a man " of strong sense and 
steady purpose, guiding his life by his own convic- 
tions of duty, with little esteem for popular opinion 



126 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

or posthumous fame ; scrupulously just and honest ; 
practicing habits of frugality less from regard to 
wealth than out of respect to the example." 

It is the fashion to laugh at the name of Smith ; 
but it must be confessed that a good many people 
who have had to go through life under that banner 
have done the world good service. 

" Jones teach him modesty and Greek, 
Smith how to think, Burke how to speak." 

This is the Smith couplet in the fine account of the 
Beefsteak Club. If Abiel Smith never did as much 
thinking as Adam, he must, all the same, be remem- 
bered as a benefactor. He certainly never did so 
much harm as Adam Smith has done, if he has 
not done more good. 

I am apt to think that this modest man was the 
first person in the English-speaking world to recog- 
nize the value of the systematic study of the modern 
languages in any university of England or America. 
A smattering of French was taught at our Cam- 
bridge as early as 1780, and Jefferson studied some 
French at William and Mary's at about the same 
time. Charles Bellini was made Professor of the 
Modern Languages there in 1781. This recogni- 
tion of the foreign languages of civilization was due 
probably to the Philistine fact that we were the 
allies of a Bourbon king. 

The first professor under this Smith foundation 
was George Ticknor, a graduate of Dartmouth Col- 
lege of the year 1807, now known everywhere in the 
world of letters by his history of Spanish literature. 
I found this book the working book of reference 



HARVARD REVISITED 127 

in the Royal Library at Madrid — which, by the 
way, is the most elegant working public library 
I ever saw. Ticknor was professor from 1820 to 
1835. Henry Wads worth Longfellow was his im- 
mediate successor, and, when Longfellow resigned 
in 1854, Lowell was appointed to succeed him. This 
is a brilliant series, the honors of which have been 
well sustained since Lowell died. 

I have seen it somewhere said that Lowell disliked 
the work of a college professor. In a way, I sup- 
pose this statement may be literally true. That is 
to say, like other men who know how to work hard, 
it was not agreeable to him to be called off at a par- 
ticular hour to do a particular thing for a particular 
length of time, and so far to interrupt the regular 
line of his study or thought for the day. But he 
was not a fool, and he accepted the universe frankly. 
So that, if it were his duty to walk down from Elm- 
wood to the college and see how a particular class 
was getting on in Spanish, or how the particular 
teacher handled the beginners in French, he could 
do that as well as another. He would scold, in his 
funny way, about such interruption of his more in- 
teresting work, — so do the rest of us, — but if the 
thing were to be done, he did it. I say this at 
the beginning of what I want to say about his posi- 
tion at Cambridge as a teacher. 

In describing the four years between 1834 and 
1838, the years of his undergraduate life, I tried to 
give some idea of what an American college was in 
those prehistoric times. Simply, it was a somewhat 
enlarged country " academy." The wonder was 



128 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

that the boys did not study in the rooms in which 
they recited, as they would have done in such an 
academy. That would have completed the resem- 
blance to such a school. The distinction that you 
studied your lesson in your own room and recited it 
in another building was the principal distinction be- 
tween your work at the Boston Latin School, or 
Leicester Academy, and the work which you did in 
college. Thus, you were told that your lesson was 
to be eighty lines of Euripides's " Hecuba." You 
sat down at your task in the evening, looked out 
the words and found out how to read it, you went 
down the next day and recited it, and went back 
again. That was all which Hecuba was to you, or 
you to Hecuba. I can conceive of nothing more 
dull. 

Governor Everett once said very well that a school 
was a place where you recited a lesson which some- 
body outside had taught you. This was quite tfue in 
those days. For one, as I ought to have said in an 
earlier chapter, I had but four teachers in college, — 
Channing, Longfellow, Peirce, and Bachi. The 
rest heard me recite but taught me nothing. 

In the twenty years between 1834 and 1855, the 
change had begun at Cambridge which has made of 
the college of to-day an entirely different place, with 
entirely different customs and traditions. It was in 
a great address delivered by Dr. Hedge at the Phi 
Beta Kappa in 1840 that the first visible token of 
this change appeared before the somewhat startled 
gaze of corporation, overseers, and graduates. Dr. 
Hedge said squarely then that this sort of school- 



HARVARD REVISITED 129 

boy work could not long continue in a civilized 
country like ours, and that everybody must go to 
work to lift the college to a higher grade. 

I think he thought that the age of undergraduates 
was to be greater than it was before. I think we 
all thought so. I am told, however, now, that the 
experience of the years since that time has not justi- 
fied this supposition. I believe that the average of 
the age of the boys in the college classes is but a 
few months older than it proved to be then. But 
I am disposed to think that in the prehistoric days 
there came in more grown men — rather sporadic 
instances, indeed, but still a good many of them — 
and that the presence of these grown men in the 
classes raised the statistics of average of those peri- 
ods. If two or three queer antediluvian fellows of 
thirty-five came into the midst of a class of fifty 
boys of sixteen, why, they screwed up the average 
age by several months. I do not understand that 
such sporadic cases occur very often now. Anyway, 
the doctrine of Dr. Hedge's address is that the col- 
lege shall open its doors to teach what it can teach ; 
that there shall be a chance for the teachers them- 
selves to be learning something in the lines of origi- 
nal research, and that every encouragement shall 
be given to the learner to follow the " bent of his 
genius," as Mr. Emerson says somewhere, and that 
he shall not be made to do certain things because 
somebody else has done them. 

The line of Presidents of short periods, which fol- 
lowed, was a line of men not disinclined to these 
larger views. Neither Dr. Sparks, nor Dr. Felton, 



130 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

nor Dr. Hill had a long enough term of office to 
do much in the direction in which President Eliot 
has so boldly stepped forward. But they were not 
averse to enlarging the life of the University. Cer- 
tainly Lowell was in sympathy with any such en- 
deavor. 

The Smith professorship, as I have intimated, 
gave opportunity for a pretty wide range of duty on 
the part of the professor. He had, indeed, a wider 
range than any other professor had in any other 
department. He was virtually responsible, as a su- 
perintendent, for the verbal instruction about nom- 
inative cases and verbs and der and die and das, 
which had to be given, if young men were to know 
anything about the literature of the languages 
taught. These languages were French, German, 
Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese. But the real de- 
tail of the instruction in these languages was given 
by people who were called assistant professors or in- 
structors ; and the professor himself, so far as he 
had a function of his own, was a lecturer on impor- 
tant themes bearing on the literary life of the last 
two or three centuries. As early as Longfellow's 
day, he delivered in college a series of lectures on 
Dante, which embodied much of what one finds in 
the notes to his translation of the poet. Lowell 
began his course by reading to the students the 
lectures which he had delivered in Boston. In the 
twenty years of his active professorship he delivered 
to them several courses of similar lectures. 

If you talk with any of the men now on the stage 
who were with him in college, you find that they 



HARVARD REVISITED 131 

associate him especially with these brilliant lectures 
which students liked to attend. But you find much 
more than this. Those who knew him at all, and 
who took any interest in the line of study to which 
he was committed, remember him from their per- 
sonal intimacies with him. I was myself much inter- 
ested, in the years between 1866 and 1870, in the 
college fortunes of Frederick Wadsworth Loring, a 
young fellow who died, too soon as it seemed, only 
a year after he graduated. He has left behind quite 
enough to justify those of us who remember him in 
what we say of his remarkable promise. I saw that 
boy when he was seven years old, sitting on a foot- 
stool at his mother's feet, reading Shakespeare 
eagerly. I said to her, " Take care ! Pray take 
care ! " And she said to me, with an expression 
which I have never forgotten, " Oh, we know the 
danger, and I think we are careful ! " And they 
were. She died, alas ! in the year 1859. He was, 
so to speak, pitchforked into college, and found 
himself there, with his passionate enthusiasm for lit- 
erature and poetry, after very hard and uncomfort- 
able discipline at a poor country academy. And at 
Cambridge, as in Lowell's time, there was chapel 
which must be attended, there was this and that 
which must be learned, and so-and-so which must 
be done. And here was Loring, wild about the 
majestic achievements of the great poets. He was 
utterly indifferent as to the systems of Ptolemy or 
of Newton ; and the world might have rolled back- 
ward for five years without his caring. Yet must is 
must, and he had to pretend to study mathematics. 



132 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

What would have happened to the dear boy but 
for the existence of two men, I do not know ; but, 
fortunately for him and for those who loved him, 
here was Lowell at the head of the department of 
modern languages, and Elbridge Jefferson Cutler 
at the head of the English subdivision. And, after 
four years of Loring's college life, which was of value 
to him that no man can pretend to describe, he grad- 
uated. I think, indeed, that they gave him a poem 
at Commencement. I have never forgotten that 
when I was at the " spread " in Holworthy, where 
Loring modestly entertained his friends on Class 
Day, I met Cutler, and I said to him, " Well, Cutler, 
you have got Fred through." " Yes," he said, " we 
have dragged him through by the hair of his head." 

" We " meant Lowell and himself. They were 
perfectly determined that this brilliant young poet 
should get what could be got out of the university. 
They were perfectly determined that no wayward- 
ness of his own should break up the regular course 
of life which offered such promise. And if I told 
some of the stories of the affectionate way in which 
those two distinguished men cared for the life of 
this distinguished boy, it would be a story out of 
which some one who knew how to hold a pen could 
make a fascinating romance or drama. It would, 
perhaps, do something to remove the preposterous 
and ridiculous impression of the more foolish under- 
graduate that " the faculty " hates him. 

On the catalogue Mr. Lowell's position as Smith 
Professor covers thirty years. In 1886 he resigned 
to be appointed "Professor Emeritus," and so his 



HARVARD REVISITED 133 

name remains on the college catalogue until his 
death. In 1865 he had the welcome relief of the 
appointment of Mr. Cutler as an assistant. The de- 
partment was gradually enlarged with the enlarge- 
ment of the college, but for thirty years it was 
under Mr. Lowell's general administration, except- 
ing during his journeys in Europe and his diplo- 
matic residence in Madrid and in London. 

This boy of 1838 left college to try the experi- 
ments of life, not really knowing what lif e had for 
him. In the seventeen years between 1838 and 
1855 he had been in Europe two or three times, 
and, as the reader knows, he had spent a part of one 
winter in Philadelphia. But Cambridge had been 
his home most of the time, and he had seen step by 
step the changes which made this "academy" or 
"seminary" into a university. Some of the offi- 
cers still remained to whom he had recited when in 
college. 

Josiah Quincy had been succeeded as President 
by Edward Everett, and Jared Sparks, and James 
Walker, the last of whom was now the President. 

Dr. Walker's name may not be universally known 
among students in all parts of this country, es- 
pecially by men of those religious schools who made 
it a duty to brand him and the men of his com- 
munion as infidels. But it is safe to say that no 
man was in college during the twenty-two years in 
which he was professor and president who does not 
remember him with gratitude and speak of him with 
enthusiasm. From 1838 to 1853 he was the Pro- 
fessor of Natural Eeligion and Moral Philosophy. 



134 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

He lectured on these subjects in the Lowell Insti- 
tute. He often preached in the college pulpit, and 
to this day, when you meet any of his old hearers, 
you will find that they hark back to him and what 
he said to them with distinct memory of the lessons, 
practical and profound, which he enforced. 

Not long before the close of his life he supplied 
for one winter the pulpit of a church a little away 
from the centre of Boston. Every Sunday saw a 
procession of his old pupils, twenty years older, per- 
haps, than they were as undergraduates, who gladly 
seized this occasion to profit by the wisdom of their 
old counselor. 

Cornelius Conway Felton, to whom I have already 
referred in speaking of the Mutual Admiration So- 
ciety, succeeded Dr. Walker. He had been Greek 
Professor when Lowell was an undergraduate. His 
successor, Dr. Thomas Hill, graduated five years 
after Lowell. 

Of his old professors Lowell found in office Lover- 
ing and Benjamin Peirce. There were one or two 
instructors in the modern languages who had sur- 
vived the interval, but for the rest his coadjutors 
had been appointed since his graduation. 

The college had been taking on her larger methods 
in those seventeen years, and during what was left 
of his life he saw and assisted in other changes 
larger yet. From the beginning he cut red tape or 
threw it away. He cultivated close acquaintance 
with the young men whom he met in his classes, and 
he and the men of his type have done much to 
bring about interest and sympathy between teacher 




CORNELIUS CONWAY FELTON 



HARVARD REVISITED 135 

and taught, such as was hardly dreamed of in Cam- 
bridge in the first half of the century. The two 
volumes of his published letters give a charming 
view of his relations with Longfellow, Norton, Cut- 
ler, and other professors of his time, and, indeed, of 
the cordial social life of Cambridge. Of these gen- 
tlemen I have something I should like to say in 
another paper of this series. But this is the better 
place to allude to the young poet, Hugh Clough, 
who is alluded to in Lowell's correspondence with 
his associates in Cambridge. Clough came to Cam- 
bridge, as I have always supposed, in the real hope 
of adapting himself to American life, or life in a 
republic, where " I am as good as the other fellow, 
and the other fellow is as good as I." Alas and 
alas ! how many of us have seen Englishmen who 
tried this great experiment, who made the great 
emigration, and then were obliged to go back to 
the leeks of Egypt ! I do not know that it was so 
with Clough, but I think it was. 

People who remember his " Bothie of Tober-na- 
Vuolich " (and they are not so many as there should 
be) will recollect that that charming poem closes as 
white handkerchiefs are waved in an adieu when 
the English steamer leaves her dock and sails with 
the hero and heroine for Australia — "a brave new 
land," without fuss and without feathers, without 
feudalism and the follies of f eudalism ; a land of 
freedom. 

" Five hundred pounds in pocket, with books, and two or three pic- 
tures, 
Tool-box, plow, and the rest, they rounded the sphere to New Zea- 
land 



136 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

"There hath he farmstead and land, and fields of corn and flax 
fields, 
And the Antipodes too have a Bothie of Tober-na-Vuolich." 

And other readers will remember that, for nearly 
a generation, more than half the English novels 
which turned out well, ended thus, in a flourish of 
trumpets in which anybody who was good for any- 
thing went away from England. Even Carlyle's 
Chartism had nothing better to propose than that 
England should send away the people she did not 
know how to take care of at home. Among them 
Clough came, but apparently he was too old. He 
went back to England, and, I think, accepted a 
government office — not, perhaps, inspector of slate- 
pencils, but something not more edifying. He died 
in 1862, in Florence. 

He was a charming poet, and I cannot but think 
a charming companion. I always think of him as a 
bishop " in partibus," a bishop without a mitre or 
a see. For Mr. Emerson told me an interesting 
story of Clough. He was one of a cluster of young 
men who had taken great delight in Emerson, on 
his visit in 1848 in England. When that visit was 
over, and Mr. Emerson sailed for America on his 
return, Clough accompanied him to Liverpool and 
bade him good-by on the deck of the steamer. As 
they walked up and down the deck together, Clough 
said sadly, " What shall we do without you ? 
Think where we are. Carlyle has led us all out 
into the desert, and he has left us there " — a re- 
mark which was exactly true. Emerson said in 
reply that very many of the fine young men in 



HARVARD REVISITED 137 

England had said this to him as he went up and 
down in his journeyings there. " And I put my 
hand upon his head as we walked, and I said, 
6 Clough, I consecrate you Bishop of all England. 
It shall be your part to go up and down through 
the desert to find out these wanderers and to lead 
them into the promised land.' " 

I do not know, but I am afraid that Clough never 
thought himself in the promised land, nor scarcely 
upon any Pisgah looking down upon it. But I tell 
the story, as showing how highly Emerson thought 
of Clough as far back as 1849. 

As I have said, Lowell succeeded Longfellow, 
who had come to Cambridge when Lowell was a 
sophomore ; and Lowell, like every one else who 
worked under Longfellow, was always grateful to 
him. Longfellow began, all too early, the habit of 
speaking of himself as an old man. But the pub- 
lished volumes of his own life show how diligent 
and active he was, and that he considered his relief 
from the daily work of his professorship as simply 
an opportunity for wider work in literature. 

By his boundless liberality to every child of sor- 
row he had made Cambridge the Mecca of a poly- 
glot pilgrimage in which any European exiles who 
could read or write came of course to the Craigie 
House to ask for his patronage and assistance. 
With Mr. Lowell's arrival there were, I think, no 
fewer of such visitors at the Craigie House ; but by 
the law of the instrument they found their way by 
the pleasant shady walk which leads from Long- 
fellow's home to Elmwood and Mount Auburn. 



138 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

I remember among these an accomplished gentle- 
man, who worked in America in the anti-slavery 
cause, in ante-bellum days. He always was grate- 
ful to Longfellow for his assistance to him, which 
came at a time when it was most needed. Heinrich 
von Hutten was a lineal descendant, I think, of 
Ulrich von Hutten, the poet of the Keformation. 
He came to this country in the suite of Kossuth, 
who ought, perhaps, to have been spoken of else- 
where in this series. Yon Hutten gave his life and 
strength, and perhaps his blood, to the Hungarian 
cause. After his arrival here he was employed by 
a publishing firm to translate Mrs. Stowe's " Uncle 
Tom's Cabin " into the German language. After 
he had begun, there was a terror lest a rival trans- 
lation should be finished before his, and the good 
Von Hutten worked day and night — too much, 
alas ! by night — in completing the work assigned 
to him. The story always reminds me of Milton's 
sonnet, 

" What sustains me, dost thou ask ? 
The conscience, friend, to have lost them overplied 
In Liberty's defense, my noble task," 

for he really lost his eyes in the cause of freedom. 

Longfellow was kind to him, Lowell was kind to 
him, and, indeed, he was a man who deserved to 
have friends everywhere. When I was in Europe 
in 1873, I was glad to hear that the good Von 
Hutten was living again in the castle of his ances- 
tors upon the Danube River. It was one of the 
minor misfortunes of my life that I was not able to 
accept his invitation to visit him there. 



HARVARD REVISITED 139 

As I have said, it has been intimated that Lowell 
chafed under the regular requisitions of the duties 
of a professor. And, as I have said, most men do 
chafe a little when they find that on a given day 
they are expected to do a given thing where they 
want to do something else. It must be discoura- 
ging to have a class of boys around you to whom a 
lesson is simply a bore, and to know that you will 
hear, at twenty-seven minutes after eleven, the same 
stupid mistake which you heard made at twenty-six 
minutes after eleven, three hundred and sixty-five 
days ago. In his private letters there is occasion- 
ally an expression, sometimes serious and sometimes 
gay, of the dislike of the necessary slavery which 
follows on such work. But he had accepted it, for 
better for worse, and went through with it loyally. 
He liked the intercourse which his work gave him 
with young men of promise, and availed himself 
gladly of every opportunity to make the intercourse 
of advantage to them. In a charming and sugges- 
tive paper by Professor Barrett Wendell, which was 
published in "ScribnerV immediately after Low- 
ell's death, there is such detail as only a college pro- 
fessor could write of some of the methods and habits 
in which Lowell grew into a friendly intimacy with 
his pupils. He assigned one evening in a week 
when they might call to see him, and he was so 
cordial then that they took the impression that he 
liked to see them, and would go up on any evening 
when they chose. I am favored with the private 
journal of one of these pupils, in which are many 
anecdotes, some even pathetic, of the cordial inter- 



140 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

course he had with them. Professor Wendell gives 
a valuable account of his own experience with Low- 
ell. He had never studied any Italian, and yet he 
boldly resolved that he would ask Lowell's permis- 
sion to attend his lectures on Dante, though he had 
no knowledge of the Italian language. Lowell was 
pleased, perhaps was interested in seeing what so 
bright a boy would do under such circumstances ; 
and the result of this was, as Mr. Wendell says, 
" at the end of a month I could read Dante better 
than I ever learned to read Greek or Latin or Ger- 
man." Kemember this, gentlemen who are taking 
nine years to teach a boy to read Latin ; and reflect 
that Mr. Wendell reads his Latin as well as the best 
of you. 

I think the reader may indulge me in a little 
excursus when I say a few words seriously to the 
undergraduates of to-day with regard to this form 
of cordial intercourse between them and their pro- 
fessors. We used to say, when I was in college, 
that we wished the professors would treat us as gen- 
tlemen. The wish is a very natural one. I have 
had many classes myself in the fifty or sixty years 
which have followed, and I have always tried to live 
up to that undergraduate theory. I have treated 
my pupils as if they wanted to learn and were gen- 
tlemen, and their honor could be relied upon. Look- 
ing back on it, I think I should say that about half 
of them have met me more than halfway. But — 
and here lies the warning which I wish to give to 
undergraduates — the other half have taken an ell 
where I gave an inch. Because I did not crowd 



HARVARD REVISITED 141 

them they did nothing; they considered me a 
" soft " person, and my course a " soft " course. In 
other words, they shirked, simply because I did not 
treat them with the methods of a low-grade gram- 
mar-school. 

Young gentlemen, then, ought to consider how 
far they are themselves responsible for any supposed 
harshness or mechanical habit on the part of the 
gentlemen who really know more than they do, and 
who are willing to trust them in their work. I had 
the honor last spring of being appointed as one of 
the judges of some prose exercises in one of our 
older colleges. I was proud and glad to give the 
time which the examination of these exercises re- 
quired. "What did I find? I found, of three dif- 
ferent papers submitted to me in competition on the 
same subject, that all the writers had stolen, from 
reviews which they supposed would not be known, 
long passages, and copied them as their own. In 
this particular case, it happened that the three writ- 
ers were so ignorant of the literature of the last half- 
century that they copied the same passage, hoping 
that the judges of their exercises would be ignorant 
enough to be deceived. Is it not rather hard to be 
told that you are to "treat as gentlemen" black- 
guards like these, who are willing to tell lies for so 
petty a purpose as was involved in this endeavor? 
I should say that the Greek-letter societies have it 
in their power to do a good deal to tone up the 
undergraduate conscience in such affairs. 

To return to Lowell: He was quite beyond and 
above confining himself to the requisitions of his 



142 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

profession. As an instance of his generosity in this 
way, in the winter of 1865 he offered to the divinity 
students to come round to them and lecture famil- 
iarly to them on the mediaeval idea of hell as it may 
be gathered from Dante. This was no part of the 
business of his chair. He volunteered for it as the 
reader of these lines might offer to take a class in a 
Sunday-school. I remember that some of the stu- 
dents took a notion that he pinched himself by his 
generous help to those whom he thought in need. 
One of his pupils told me that Lowell offered him a 
Christmas present of valuable books, under the pre- 
text that he was thinning out his book-shelves. " I 
declined them/' said my friend, "simply from the 
feeling that he could not afford to give them. I 
need not say/' he says, "that I am sorry for this 
now." 

I am favored by Mr. Kobert Lincoln, who was 
fortunate enough to be one of his pupils, with the 
following memoranda of the impression which he 
made upon them : — 

Dear Doctor Hale, — My only association with 
Mr. Lowell in college was as a member of a small 
class who " went through " Dante under his super- 
vision. Our duty was to prepare ourselves to trans- 
late the text, and Mr. Lowell heard our blunderings 
with a wonderful patience, and rewarded us with 
delightful talks on matters suggested in the poem ; 
but we had no set lecture. My experience (that is, 
at Harvard), therefore, only permits me to speak of 
him as a professor in the recitation-room. In that 



HARVARD REVISITED 143 

relation his erudition, humor, and kindness made 
me, and I am sure all my associates, enjoy the hour 
with him as we did no other college exercise. I can 
sincerely say that it is one of my most highly cher- 
ished experiences. With us he was always conver- 
sational, and flattered us and gained us by an 
assumption that what interested him interested us. 
When now I take up my Dante. Mr. Lowell seems 
to be with me. . . . 

Always sincerely yours, 

Robert T. Lincoln. 

It will be seen that the impression made on Mr. 
Lincoln, and his memories of Lowell, are similar to 
those of Mr. "Wendell. 

From the journal to which I have referred I copy 
the following passages : — 

"June 12, 1865, I went to look at the scenery 
from Mount Auburn tower. Returning, I found 
the serene possessor of Elmwood in good spirits, ate 
a Graham biscuit and drank some delicious milk 
with him and his wife, then enjoyed a very pleasant 
conversation. He read some of Shakespeare's son- 
nets, to make me think better of them, and suc- 
ceeded. His noble old dog Argus had been poisoned, 
and in Argus's place he had a young Newfoundland 
pup which he called Bessie, as black Aggy Green, 
on Port Royal Island, named her pet sow ! He gave 
me a very welcome copy of Macaulay's essays and 
poems, and the little visit was another oasis in 
school life's dearth of home sociability. Mabel, his 
only child, was not there at supper, but came home 



144 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

some time after : ' Salute your progenitor ! ' and 
the answer was a daughter's kiss. 

" In September, 1865, he offered to conduct the 
divinity students into Dante's conception of hell, 
and as far out as time would allow. He read the 
first canto through for introduction, and gave me 
the second for our first trial. I went, because I 
wanted to become inured, lest I might have to con- 
duct somebody else. He had too many other duties, 
was somewhat unwell, cut the Dante for both days 
of a week three or four times, some of the readers 
were not Italian enough to read easily, and on De- 
cember 13 he gave us up as a lost tribe of the race 
of Adam. January 19, 1866, 1 was his guest again, 
clear even of the central frozen bolgia. After din- 
ner he gave me a card to Longfellow, whom I found 
about four o'clock at his dinner." 

The same accurate critic writes : — 

" In Lowell's college work the weakest part was 
his class teaching. While no teacher in the univer- 
sity was more willing to help his boys, his habit of 
doing most of the reading, when a boy labored, 
with friction, breaking right into his reading, was 
not agreeable to the boy. But even in that he at 
least had the courage of mastery, and never shirked 
the hard passages. His corrections and remarks 
were often lost from the want of clearness and 
open-mouthed carefulness of articulation. When he 
spoke in public he always made himself heard ; but 
to a small, almost private class, speaking without 
effort, his modest stillness and his smothering mus- 
tache would make us wish that men's hair had been 



HARVARD REVISITED 145 

forbidden to grow forward of the corner of their 
mouths." 

I must postpone other references to Mr. Lowell's 
life with his students to the next chapter, which will 
speak of him in his relations to the civil war, 
which followed so soon after his appointment at 
Cambridge. His home at Cambridge for much of 
the first two years of his professorship had been 
with Dr. and Mrs. Howe, in Kirkland Street. In 
September, 1857, he was able to return to Elmwood 
and reestablish family life, after his fortunate and 
happy marriage to Miss Frances Dunlap. 

Every person who has had any experience in 
teaching knows that the great danger to a school- 
master or a professor is that he shall know but little 
of what passes outside his own cocoon. There is 
an old satirical fling which says that a schoolmaster 
is a man who does not take the voyage of life him- 
self, but stands on the gangway of the steamer to 
pass those along who are going to take it. This is 
not true, but it has just foundation enough to give 
point to the satire, and to give suggestion to those 
who are in danger. 

The danger is that a man shall think that half 
the world is contained in the ring-fence which in- 
closes the territory where they hear his academy 
bell. Can you conceive of a better antidote for his 
sweet poison, or a better rescue from his dangers, 
than the occupation of an editor ? Mr. Lowell, in 
handling the " North American " and the " Atlan- 
tic," had to see that there were people quite as 
much interested in life as he, who lived in Texas 



146 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

and in Washington Territory and in the Sandwich 
Islands and in New Zealand. He did not open a 
morning's mail but it taught him that the world, 
while it is a very small place, is a small place which 
has some very large conditions. He was that sort 
of a man that his nature could never have been 
petty or provincial; but the avocations which edi- 
torial life brought him would of themselves have 
made him cosmopolitan. 



CHAPTEK X 

lowell's experience as an editor 

Lowell's whole life was a literary life, from the 
days of the " Boston Miscellany " and of the " Pio- 
neer." And I am well aware that these notes will 
be read with a certain special interest by young 
people who are asking themselves whether litera- 
ture, as such, offers "a career" to those who are 
entering upon life. 

It required much more resolution to determine on 
such a career in America in 1841 than it does now. 
I will attempt, therefore, in this paper, to bring to- 
gether such illustrations of Lowell's life as a man of 
letters as we may have room for, which do not spe- 
cially connect themselves with the political history 
of the times, or with his special work as a professor 
in Harvard College. 

In an earlier chapter I have already printed some 
of the pathetic memoranda which show how modestly 
his career began. Knowing as we do that, before 
he was fifty years old, this man was to rank as one 
of the first poets of his time, is it not pathetic to 
find him writing to his nearest friend to ask whether 
it is probable that three hundred copies of his poems 
can be sold? 

It happened, as also has appeared in that chapter, 



148 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

that it was the periodical press which gave the 
means of physical support to the young man who 
was attempting this venture. In the same chapter 
I cited what is the really funny criticism of Willis, 
if he made it, — when he says that a man of genius 
may not be a good editor. As it happened, Lowell 
devoted much of his after life to the steady business 
of editing periodicals. I mean by this, not simply 
the general oversight of the plan of the journal 
for which he was responsible, but that diligent and 
tedious daily work, whether of reading manuscripts, 
of correcting and improving them, of correspondence 
with writers, and of hourly intimacy with publishers, 
which makes at once the drudgery and the pleasure 
of real editorial life. I observe that most young 
men and women who think they want to be " con- 
nected with the press " suppose that such a connec- 
tion will simply compel them to go to the theatre 
every night, and to read agreeable novels and maga- 
zines all day. I have had a good deal to do with 
editorial life myself, and I have not found that this 
general impression regarding it is correct. Certainly 
Lowell never " got round to it." He worked with 
steadfast diligence. He says in one place that he 
worked more than fifteen hours, on an average, 
every day. This means that he really read the 
manuscripts which he had in hand, that he really 
looked over the range of the world's business to see 
what he wanted, and that he tried to engage such 
authors as were best fitted for special work in the 
journal for which he was engaged. His acquaint- 
ance with men and women became larger and larger 



LOWELL'S EXPERIENCE AS AN EDITOR 149 

as he did this, and there is many a pretty story of 
the encouragement which he gave to young writers 
at the very beginning of their career. 

Thus, there was a joke afterwards between him 
and Mr. Aldrich. When Aldrich, somewhat tim- 
idly, sent his first poem to the " Atlantic," Lowell 
at once recognized its worth, and sent to him the 
most cordial thanks. Many years after, Aldrich 
found himself, in turn, editor of the "Atlantic." 
Lowell, then at the height of his reputation, sent a 
poem to the magazine. Aldrich had the fun to 
copy, in acknowledging the manuscript, the very 
note which Lowell wrote to him, most kindly, twenty 
years before, in which he recognized the value of 
his first contribution. Lowell came round to the 
office at once, and told Aldrich that he had almost 
determined him " to adopt a literary career." 

As the reader knows, Lowell edited the " Pio- 
neer " for its short existence of three months. 

In the summer of 1846 he agreed to write once a 
week, in prose or in poetry, for the " Anti-Slavery 
Standard," the best of the anti-slavery journals. He 
was called a corresponding editor. The paper was 
edited by the masterly hand of Mr. Sidney Gay, 
afterwards the editor of the " Popular History." 

Mr. Lawrence Lowell, in his interesting memoir 
of the poet's life, calls the few years from 1846 to 
1850 the most active and the most happy of his life. 
"His happiness was, indeed, broken by the death 
of little Blanche, in March, 1847 ; but a new joy 
came to him in the birth of another daughter, Rose, 
toward the close of the year. Both grief and joy, 



150 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

however, seem to have stimulated his poetic feeling, 
and poems such as c The First Snowfall ' and ' The 
Changeling ' show the ecstasy to which they brought 
his nature. During all this period he wrote inces- 
santly, sometimes about public affairs, sometimes 
from a purely poetic impulse, with no direct relation 
to the great struggle in which he was engaged, but 
almost always with a stern sense of his mission as a 
prophet and a seer. His character no less than his 
poetic feeling had deepened and strengthened, and 
poems like 'The Present Crisis' attest the full 
maturity of his powers." 

When Phillips & Sampson established the " At- 
lantic Monthly," in the autumn of 1857, he was its 
first regular editor; and there are some very nice 
letters of his in which he speaks of the somewhat 
sudden change in the methods of his daily life which 
come in as he walks along the river-bank from Elm- 
wood and takes the street-car to the office in Boston. 
If there were room, I could hardly print anything 
more interesting than specimens of the notes which 
he wrote to authors. They give a very pretty pic- 
ture of the watchful interest which he took in each 
individual number of the " Atlantic." It is as the 
mother of a large family might not let her children 
go to a Christmas party without seeing that the 
hands of each one were perfectly clean, and that the 
collar of each one was prettier and neater than the 
others'. I think I may say that, in a somewhat 
varied experience in such matters, I have known no 
editor who had so close a watchful eye on the detail 
of the work of his journal. 




JAMES T. FIELDS 



LOWELL'S EXPERIENCE AS AN EDITOR 151 

This connection with the " Atlantic " lasted for 
four years, when James T. Fields, the prince among 
editors, took his place. In the year 1863, in com- 
pany with his very dear friend Mr. Charles Eliot Nor- 
ton, he became the editor of the " North American 
Review." What this meant appears from the fact 
that between the years 1863 and 1877 he wrote 
thirty-four "articles" for the "North American," 
besides as many more of what, in the language of 
that day, were called "critical notices." In the 
"Atlantic Monthly," between the years 1857 and 
1877, he wrote one hundred and sixteen articles, 
prose or poetry. 

There are, as I have intimated, a great many men 
now prominent among our men of letters who recol- 
lect Lowell gratefully as being the Beatrice who 
first welcomed them into this Paradise. Without 
attempting to name half of them, I will say that 
Mr. Howells, whom he welcomes so cordially in a 
letter which is to be found in Mr. Norton's collec- 
tion, and Mr. Aldrich, to whom I referred just now, 
both afterwards became editors of the " Atlantic " 
themselves. In their time they have passed on the 
welcome which the prince of American poets gave 
to both of them. And each of them inherited in 
turn the traditions of the office, as he established 
them. 

The establishment of the " Atlantic Monthly " in 
the autumn of 1857 proved so fortunate an era in 
the history of the native literature of America that 
I may safely give to it a few sentences in these 
memorials. Lowell's connection with that magazine 



152 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

enlarged very widely the circle of his friends and 
the range of his life. 

It was, then, two or three years since the little 
Eden of Boston bookselling had been disturbed in 
its somnolence to a sudden " new departure/' if we 
may borrow an admirable phrase from the forgotten 
times when we had a mercantile marine. This " new 
departure " was the movement, as of a stork among 
a world of frogs, instituted by Phillips & Sampson, 
a new-born firm among booksellers. 

The publishing business in Boston felt the wave 
of their impetuosity. It can hardly be said that the 
old houses waked from the decorous sleep of many 
years. But this new publishing house, with man- 
ners and customs wholly unknown before, suddenly 
appeared, to the dumb amazement of the old stand- 
bys, and to the delight and amusement of all young 
America, in the East. 

Boston had never earned for itself its distinct 
position as one of the publishing centres of America. 
It had inherited that position without earning it. 
Harvard College, the Boston Athenaeum, the Amer- 
ican Academy, the Massachusetts Historical Society, 
the New England system of lectures, and the great 
free school system, which gave a liberal education 
to any boy who would take it, — these, all together, 
created a circle of authors. They created the 
" Monthly Anthology,'' the " North American Re- 
view," and the "Christian Examiner." Such men 
as Bancroft, Prescott, Hildreth, Sparks, the Everetts, 
Hawthorne, Emerson, and now Lowell, came forward 
with books which had to be published. The loyalty 



LOWELL'S EXPERIENCE AS AN EDITOR 153 

o£ the Boston lawyers to their business, of the doc- 
tors to theirs, and of the -ministers to theirs, had 
made it necessary that there should be printers and 
shops where books could be bought and sold. So 
the importers of English books had become, in a 
languid way, the publishers of books. 

But they did not want to publish them. They 
did not expect to make money by publishing them. 
They did not know anything about them. Alexan- 
der Everett used to say that a bookseller was the 
only tradesman who knew nothing about the wares 
he sold. Of the Boston trade in those prehistoric 
days this was substantially true. But, in truth, 
there was not much publishing, excepting the issue 
of some law books and a few medical books. Hil-. 
Hard & Gray, and Crocker & Brewster, attended to 
these affairs and cared little for any others. 

Any one of the old firms regarded an author with 
a manuscript much as a dealer in Russian sail-cloth 
might regard a lady who should come into his count- 
ing-room and ask him to make her a linen handker- 
chief. 

All of a sudden, as a wave of water might sweep 
over a thick, rotten ice-floe in one of Nansen's sum- 
mers, a marvelous inundation swept over this deco- 
rous imbecility. That is to say, two young men 
formed a " publishing firm." They did not want 
to import books. They wanted to make them and 
to sell them. 

More simply speaking, " Phillips & Sampson " 
appeared about the year 1843. Charles Sampson 
(a young man when he died in 1858) used to say 



154 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

that he had peddled molasses candy from a tin 
waiter on holidays, when he was a boy. Moses 
Dresser Phillips had been brought up to the retail 
book trade in Worcester, in the shop of Clarendon 
Harris, who succeeded Isaiah Thomas, the publisher 
of the first American Bible. I do not know how 
these young fellows first met each other. But it 
was they who taught the drowsy chiefs of the little 
Boston book-shops the great lesson that in a na- 
tion which had taught thirty million people how to 
read, there were more than five hundred people 
who wanted to read Emerson's essays or Macaulay's 
history. 

Emerson, as has been said, had never received 
one cent from the publication of his essays, when 
Phillips & Sampson, about 1850, published " Eng- 
lish Traits" for him. Mr. Phillips was by mar- 
riage connected with Emerson's family, and had 
persuaded him to leave James Monroe and give the 
new book to the younger firm, now well established 
in business. 

But this new firm meant to make books which 
everybody must buy, and to sell them where any- 
body could read. They did not pretend to retail 
books, any more than the Pacific Mills pretend to sell 
to a good housewife the material for a shirt or a sheet. 
They did mean to make them and to sell them to 
the retailers. So far as the nation at large went, or 
a wholesale trade with dealers anywhere, they had 
hardly any rivals in Boston. Opposite them was 
the shop of Ticknor & Fields. The young, wide- 
awake James T. Fields, now so well known by his 




MOSES DRESSER PHILLIPS 



LOWELL'S EXPERIENCE AS AN EDITOR 155 

charming reminiscences and other essays, had en- 
tered that shop, as "youngest boy/' in the later 
thirties. His broad and intelligent foresight was 
beginning to bear fruit. But Allen & Ticknor can 
hardly be numbered among publishers, and Ticknor 
& Fields did not exist as a firm until Cummings & 
Hilliard had become Hilliard & Gray. This firm 
published law books and medical books. Crocker 
& Brewster, successors to Governor Armstrong, im- 
ported and sold theological books. I bought my 
Hebrew Bible and my Gesenius's Lexicon from 
them in 1839. But, if a man wanted one of these 
firms to publish a book for him, why, they would 
have told him that he must pay for his plates and 
his printing. Thus Mr. Bancroft, fortunately for 
himself, owned the plates and the printed copies of 
his own History from 1833 until he died. 

Charles Sampson and Moses Dresser Phillips made 
an admirable combination, and the early death of 
both of them made a break in the book business of 
Boston which it did not easily recover from. These 
young men were not satisfied with the gilt-edged 
retail " trade " of Boston and Cambridge. They 
went far afield with their wares. Mr. Phillips used 
to tell with glee the story of their first orders from 
San Francisco in the '49 days. " So many hundred 
packs of ' Highland ' cards, so many of the ' True 
Thomas ' cards, and so on till the box was nearly 
full, and then c one dozen Bibles.' " 

This was seed-corn, he said. And then, in 1852 
or 1853, he would read you their last invoices, 
as they answered immense orders from California. 



156 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

" Four hundred Byron's Poems, four hundred 
Scott's Poems, one hundred Cowper's Poems/' and 
so on, in large shipments. And he would say, 
" That is the crop that comes from the twelve 
Bibles. Such editions of the poets," he would say, 
" as you would not have seen in your house, — but, 
after all, Cowper is Cowper, and Scott is Scott." 

Both these men were resolute to meet the people 
halfway. Both of them were Democrats in parti- 
san connection, not because they believed in the 
heresies of such men as Polk and Dallas, but be- 
cause they believed in the People. There was 
nothing of the white-kid glove, gilt-edged paper, 
" u in honour " nonsense about them. Naturally, 
such believers as they were regarded as unorthodox 
in the trade of that day. 

Their great onslaught on decorous publishing 
was made when they printed and sold Macaulay's 
History for fifty cents a volume at retail. 

Such a firm as this won its way up from selling 
books at auction, at retail, on winter evenings, to 
publishing large editions and placing them every- 
where in America. And when the fullness of time 
for such an enterprise came, they determined to 
publish "The Atlantic Monthly." The plan was 
matured in the autumn of 1857. Through the 
kindness of a friend, I am able to reprint here Mr. 
Phillips's own description, at the time, of a famous 
dinner in which the enterprise was first announced 
— I ought not to say in public, for this was a pri- 
vate dinner. But I may say that that dinner-party 
was the first of a series which the Saturday Club of 



LOWELL'S EXPERIENCE AS AN EDITOR 15T 

Boston has held from that day to this day. Mr. 
Phillips wrote, " I must tell you about a little dinner- 
party I gave about two weeks ago. It would be 
proper, perhaps, to state that the origin of it was 
a desire to confer with my literary friends on a 
somewhat extensive literary project, the particulars 
of which I shall reserve till you come. But to the 
party : My invitations included only R. W. Emerson, 
H. W. Longfellow, J. R. Lowell, Mr. Motley (the 
c Dutch Republic ' man), 0. W. Holmes, Mr. Cabot, 
and Mr. Underwood, our literary man. Imagine your 
uncle as the head of such a table, with such guests. 
The above named were the only ones invited, and 
they were all present. We sat down at three p. m., 
and rose at eight. The time occupied was longer by 
about four hours and thirty minutes than I am in the 
habit of consuming in that kind of occupation, but 
it was the richest time intellectually by all odds that 
I have ever had. Leaving myself and ' literary man ' 
out of the group, I think you will agree with me that 
it would be difficult to duplicate that number of such 
conceded scholarship in the whole country beside. 

" Mr. Emerson took the first post of honor at my 
right, and Mr. Longfellow the second at my left. 
The exact arrangement of the table was as follows : 

Mr. Underwood. 

Cabot. Lowell. 

Motley. Holmes. 

Longfellow. Emerson. 

Phillips. 

" They seemed so well pleased that they adjourned, 
and invited me to meet them again to-morrow, when 



158 JAMES EUSSELL LOWELL 

I shall again meet the same persons, with one other 
(Whipple, the essayist) added to that brilliant con- 
stellation of philosophical, poetical, and historical 
talent. Each one is known alike on both sides of 
the Atlantic, and is read beyond the limits of the 
English language. Though all this is known to 
you, you will pardon me for intruding it upon you. 
But still I have the vanity to believe that you will 
think them the most natural thoughts in the world 
to me. Though I say it that should not, it was the 
proudest day of my life." 

In this letter he does not tell of his own little 
speech, made at the launch. But at the time we 
all knew of it. He announced the plan of the 
magazine by saying, " Mr. Cabot is much wiser than 
I am. Dr. Holmes can write funnier verses than I 
can. Mr. Motley can write history better than I. 
Mr. Emerson is a philosopher and I am not. Mr. 
Lowell knows more of the old poets than I." But 
after this confession he said, "But none of you 
knows the American people as well as I do." 

This was the truth, and they knew it was the 
truth. The " Atlantic," at that moment, asserted 
its true place. It was not " The Boston Mis- 
cellany ; " it was the journal for the nation, which 
at that time had no Pacific slope which needed to 
be named. 

Yet I have guessed that, in the fact that " the 
Atlantic States " were then contributing the capital 
and the men who were forming the Pacific States, 
we find the origin of the very fortunate name 
of the magazine. The civilization of the smaller 




OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES (1S62) 



LOWELL'S EXPERIENCE AS AN EDITOR 159 

Atlantic basin was beginning to assert itself in that 
great Pacific basin which implies, when we speak 
of it, half the surface of the world. And of such an 
assertion the " Atlantic " was to be the mouthpiece. 
But this is my guess only. I never talked with him 
about the name, and I do not know who suggested 
it. No man then thought of the Philippines. 

I always thought that, at the beginning, Mr. 
Phillips meant to edit the magazine himself. I do 
not believe that it occurred to him, before he began, 
that a magazine office is a place to which every 
prophet, every poet, and every fool in the land 
thinks he may send what he chooses to write, and 
supposes that he is " entitled " to have it read, not 
to say printed and circulated. I think he thought 
he was to ask John, James, and the others, for 
whom he was publishing books, to send articles fit 
for the magazine, as Mr. Prescott, for instance, sent 
a chapter of his " Charles the Fifth." He did not 
think that Tom, Dick, or Harry had any " rights " 
in the business. Perhaps Mr. Underwood or some 
one in the office was to read the proofs. 

But very soon this simple Arcadian notion van- 
ished. And very soon Lowell was the working 
editor of the magazine. 

Let me say a word about any presumption that 
Lowell was a mere figurehead, and that some one 
else did the work. Trust me, for I know. I have 
worked under many editors, good and bad. Not 
one of them understood his business better than 
Lowell, or worked at its details more faithfully. I 
think he hated to read manuscripts as much as any 



160 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

man of sense does. In those days there was practi- 
cally no typewriting. I think that, like any man 
of sense, he would prefer to write an article than to 
read the average " contribution." But he had said 
he would do it, and he did it — up to time, so far 
as I have seen, careful in detail even to the least 
detail, and he had no reason to be ashamed of his 
work when he was done. 

In those days people of literary aspirations, espe- 
cially young people, read the English magazines 
almost religiously. Indeed, " Blackwood " and 
" Frazer " and sometimes the " Dublin University 
Magazine " were worth reading. I am afraid that, 
for all I have said or implied about the American 
or Atlantic basis of the new magazine, the original 
cover was, in a way, an imitation of " Blackwood." 
The color was, as it is, a sort of tawny brown. It 
was more tawny then than it is now. Did it just 
suggest the " tawny lion pawing to be free " ? I 
do not think Phillips thought of this. Perhaps 
Holmes and Lowell did. Where " Blackwood's 
Magazine " had and has a medallion head of some- 
body, we put on the cover of our " maga " the head 
of John Winthrop, from the old portrait said to be 
by Vandyke, — I do not know why. 

Now this was as bad a mistake as the New 
Yorkers made in calling their magazine the " Knick- 
erbocker." That is, it gave a local emblem to a 
national magazine. John Winthrop was a great 
man. But his greatness belonged to Massachusetts, 
and not to the nation. West of the Hudson Kiver 
there were not a thousand men in the country who 
knew anything about him. 



LOWELL'S EXPERIENCE AS AN EDITOR 161 

But this mistake was not held to. After two 
years the " Atlantic " had full reason to show that 
it stood ; not for Massachusetts, but for " We, the 
People of the United States." And the national 
flag was substituted for the head of a Massachusetts 
governor. Why it was taken off, I never knew ; 
I doubt if any one else does. One is pleased to 
see, as this sheet passes the press, that it has ap- 
peared again. 1 

In the war the magazine was loyal from hub to 
tire. Some capital contributions to history are em- 
balmed in it. I remember the late Caleb William 
Loring's excellent paper on Antietam, a good com- 
panion to Dr. Holmes's " Hunt after the Captain." 

It may be amusing to preserve one or two remi- 
niscences of the delay with which magazines then 
appeared, at which writers meekly complained. 

The admirable Theodore Winthrop was killed in a 
miserable outpost skirmish above Hampton. Then, 
and, alas ! not till then, the " Atlantic people " 
remembered that they had some excellent manu- 
scripts of his, which had been seasoning in the safe, 
doubtless paid for when they were accepted, but 
" crowded out " till then. Then they were pushed 
into type as soon as might be. But death came 
before the " Atlantic " took the credit, which it de- 
served, of discovering the author. 

I tell this, with some venom, because I myself 

suffered a little from what Hamlet should have 

called the pangs of delay of magazine men. I had 

written for the Ohio canvass of September, 1863, a 

1 Alas, to be eclipsed again ! 



162 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

story called " The Man without a Country." It 
was " rushed through/' that it might be in time 
to defeat Vallandigham in the election of October. 
And by such swiftness of proofs and revises, unex- 
ampled before, it got itself printed in the December 
number of the same year, when poor Vallandigham 
had been well beaten and forgotten ! 

Ah, youngsters of 1898, how little do you know 
of what you enjoy in these days of " quick proofs, 
no revises, fast coaches." The true rule for an edi- 
tor is to send back to each author every manuscript 
which he has by him, and to trust to February to 
fill the appetite of March. One does not care to 
have his eggs too old. 

It is to go back a little from the birthday of the 
" Atlantic " to speak of the first of the " Biglow 
Papers " ten years before. The series ran for nearly 
four years. 

It was in June, 1846, in face of the almost unani- 
mous hatred of the Mexican War among Massachu- 
setts people, that a regiment was raised in Boston 
and the neighborhood for that war. Lowell saw 
a recruiting officer in the street, and was roused 
to much the sort of wrath which fired the average 
Boston gentleman in 1773 when he saw a " lobster- 
back" loafing in the same street with as little reason. 
Lowell wrote for the " Courier " what he calls " a 
squib," which was the first of the " Biglow Papers." 
Mr. Lawrence Lowell reminds us that he did not 
follow up its success at once. The third paper was 
published a year and a half after the first. After 
this the poems of the first series appeared in rapid 
succession. 



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To Sahara's great desert and let it bore there, 



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•* Thero comes Harry Franco, and, as he draw%§& 
You iind that's a smile which you took for a sneer ; 
One half of him contradicts t'other, his wont 
Is to say very sharp things and do very blunt ; 
Ilis manner '.? as hard as his fooUngs are tender, 
And a sortie he'll moke when he means to surrender; 
He's in joke half the time when he seems* to he sternest, 
Whon he seems to be joking, bo sure he's in enrnest ; 
He has common sense in a way that's uncommon, 
Hates humbug and cant, loves his friends like a woman, 
Builds his dislikes of cards and his friendships of oak, 
Loves a prejudice better than aught but a joke, 
Is half upright Quaker, half downrhrnt /nine-outer, 
Loves Freedom top well to go stark mad about her, 
Quite artless himself is a lover o/J?rt 8 
Shuts you out of his secrets andjntojiis heart, 
And though not a poet, yet all must admire 
in, his letters of Pinto his akill on the liar. 






f Thero comes Foe with his ravenilikc Barnaby Budge, ^ / 
Three-fifths of him genius and two-fifths sheer fudge, ' 



A FABLE FOR CRITICS" PROOF-SHEET WITH LOWELL'S CORRECTIONS 
From the original, kindly lent by Mrs. Charles F. Briggs, Brooklyn, N. Y. 



LOWELL'S EXPERIENCE AS AN EDITOR 163 

In the period between the middle of 1847 and 
the end of 1849 he wrote most of the "Biglow 
Papers" of that series, he continued his regular 
work for the "Standard," and wrote the "Fable for 
Critics" and the "Vision of Sir Launfal." Mr. 
Lawrence Lowell says that the last was written in 
forty-eight hours, during which he scarcely slept or 
ate ; and he considers it the most generally popular 
of the poet's longer poems. 

Success gave him new stimulus, and in a happy 
home he worked with all the help which love and 
true sympathy could give him. To enter into the 
spirit of that life, one must make real what Mr. 
Lawrence Lowell has so well expressed. " He was, 
no doubt, to some extent a martyr for his political 
opinions, but no martyr was ever so high-spirited, 
so jovial, and so charming. As he said himself, he 
was curiously compounded of two utterly distinct 
characters. One half was clear mystic and enthu- 
siast, the other humorist ; and the humor, which is 
the best balance-wheel vouchsafed to man, prevented 
his remaining narrow or fanatical." 

" On July 1, 1851, he embarked on a sailing ves- 
sel for Genoa, and passed most of the following year 
in Italy. A great part of the year was spent in 
Eome, with his lifelong friend, William "Wetmore 
Story." But the charm of the earlier years was 
broken. His little Eose died in 1850 ; Walter, his 
only son, died two years later ; Mrs. Lowell's health, 
always delicate, gave way, and she died in 1853, on 
the 27th of October, after they had returned to 
America. 



164 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

His duty as professor at Cambridge began in 
September, 1856. Of some details in his discharge 
of this I have spoken in another chapter. He would 
refer, sometimes, to a certain " numbness " in liter- 
ary effort which came from the monotony of a 
teacher's duties. But, as Mr. Lawrence Lowell 
says, when we remember that most of his prose 
books were written in the twenty years of his pro- 
fessorship, that in the same time he wrote " The 
Cathedral," the second series of the "Biglow Pa- 
pers," the great " Commemoration Ode," and sev- 
eral of his best shorter poems, we feel that we must 
not take too seriously what he said of the numbing 
effect of the class-room. 

Of " The Cathedral," after nearly thirty years, I 
may perhaps mention a contemporary criticism. 
When it was published, I was the editor of " Old 
and New." My theory was, and is, that generally 
a book should be reviewed by some one in sympathy 
with the author. So I sent "The Cathedral" to 
Mr. Waldo Emerson, hoping that he would write a 
review of it for our magazine. He returned the 
book the next day, saying that he could not write 
the article. When I met him next, I expressed 
my regret ; and the philosopher said simply, " But, 
I like Lowell, I like Lowell." To which I re- 
plied, " Yes, and you like the poem, do you not ? " 
" I like it — yes ; but I think he had to pump." 
The figure is best understood by those of us who 
know the difference between " striking oil " and dig- 
ging an artesian well for it and putting in valves 
and pistons with a steam-engine. Probably Lowell 













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WILLIAM WETMORE STORY 



LOWELL'S EXPERIENCE AS AN EDITOR 165 

would have enjoyed the criticism as much as any 
one. 

Lowell's own inside view of editing, and of the 
" Atlantic/' the early career of which he directed, 
peeps out again and again in his letters. If it were 
well to print here some of his private notes to con- 
tributors, they would, as I have intimated, show an 
almost motherly care of the new-born magazine. 
The first number is dated December, 1857, and in 
that month he writes, " Even the Magazine has its 
compensations." Let the reader remember that the 
new duty he has undertaken, the "avocation," is 
superimposed on his "vocation," — the regular work 
of a full college professor. "First, it has almost 
got me out of debt, and, next, it compels me into 
morning walks to the printing-office. [This was 
the Riverside Press, not far from the college.] 
There is a little foot-path which leads along the 
river-bank, and it is lovely, whether in clear, cold 
mornings, when the fine filaments of the bare trees 
on the horizon seem floating up like sea-mosses in 
the ether sea, or when (as yesterday) a gray mist 
fills our Cambridge cup, and gives a doubtful loom 
to its snowy brim of hills, while the silent gulls 
wheel over the nestling cakes of ice which the 
Charles is whirling seaward." 

If other editors had a morning walk like this, and 
had the eyes to see and the ears to hear, it might 
be well for other readers. 

When one remembers that the Autocrat's papers 
were going on in the " Atlantic " at this time, that 
Motley and Prescott were publishing bits of their 



166 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

histories in it, that Longfellow wrote almost regu- 
larly in these numbers, and that younger writers, 
now well known, were winning their spurs in these 
first two volumes, it is easy to see that the work 
of the editor, who was easily chief among them, 
was interesting and inspiring to him. People were 
not then used to such papers as his on Choate 
and Cushing. He writes this scrap in October, 
1858: — 

" Phillips was so persuaded of the stand given to 
the Magazine by the Choate article that he has been 
at me ever since for another. So I have been writ- 
ing a still longer one on Cushing. I think you will 
like it, — though on looking over the Choate article 
I am inclined to think that, on the whole, the better 
of the two. 

"The worst [of editing] is that it leads me to 
bore my friends when I do get at them. To be an 
editor is almost as bad as being President." 

To Mr. Higginson, then forty years younger 
than he is now, he says, "As for your own con- 
tributions, I may say to you, as I always have to 
Mr. Underwood, that they are just to my liking, — 
scholarly, picturesque, and, above all, earnest, — I 
think the most telling essays we have printed." 

And when he resigns the charge to his friend 
Fields — his warm friend till death — in May, 1861: 
" I was going to say I was glad to be rid of my old 
man of the sea. But I don't believe I am. A bore 
that is periodical gets a friendly face at last, and 
we miss it on the whole. . . . 

" Well, good-by — delusive royalty ! I abdicate 



LOWELL'S EXPERIENCE AS AN EDITOR 167 

with what grace I may. I lay aside my paper crown 
and feather sceptre." 

And in the same note he says he shall always 
gladly do what he can for the " Atlantic," a promise 
which he well fulfilled. The second series of the 
" Biglow Papers " was published there. 

In a way, perhaps, he had a right to feel that he, 
earlier than any one else, had the credit for the first 
fortunes of the "Atlantic," and to be proud of 
them. To become the editor of the aged " North 
American," hand in hand with his near friend Mr. 
Norton, was a wholly different thing. 

I am sure that there is somewhere, among his 
by-letters, an outburst as to what he will do " if 
he shall ever edit the ' North American.' " I think 
most youngsters of his time — who were born with 
a pen in hand — indulged in the same dream, if 
they were bred within sound of the college bell at 
Cambridge. 

In those prehistoric days the "North American," 
to the notions of the few hundred people who had 
ever heard of it, was wholly different from what any 
journal is now to any reader. Four times a year 
only — quarterly ! — think of that, young contribu- 
tors to to-day's "Atlantic" who can hardly live three 
weeks, to know if that horrid man has refused your 
poem, or if that charming and sensible editor has 
printed it ! Eead Mrs. Lyman's Life, or any other 
good sketch of New England life in the twenties of 
this century, and see how people wrote or spoke of 
the arrival of the new " North American," with the 



168 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

interest with which the inhabitants of Saturn might 
speak of the regular decennial fall of some well- 
timed aerolite ! 

The " North American " is now so different from 
what it was in 1864, when Lowell took charge of it 
with Mr. Norton, that its accomplished editor will 
pardon me if I say ten words more about its infant 
issues, to the young writers of this generation. It 
was founded — modestly, yes, but with determina- 
tion — among a little confident circle of the well- 
trained young men of Boston, at a moment when 
Boston counted, perhaps, fifty thousand people. 
These were people who had time to read, and time 
to write, and thought themselves, strange to say, 
the rivals and equals of anybody in the world. 
The quarterly was the then regnant fashion. The 
Edinburgh " Quarterly," the London " Quarterly," 
were the arrogant dictators of English literature. 
" Go to, now ! We will dictate also ! We will 
have a ' Quarterly ' of our own ! " For one, I like 
what the vernacular calls the " dander " of that 
determination. 

And some plucky and loyal bits of good Ameri- 
can sentiment and statement got themselves into the 
juvenile " North American." But it was awfully 
proper. Its editors were more anxious about making 
their " Quarterly " respectable in the eyes of their 
ten English readers than of the thousand American 
readers, more or less, who paid them five dollars a 
year for their editing. 

Now the remainder of the people of England and 
of the people of America did not know that any 





-Jw^n$^ {^U^rb . 






LOWELL'S EXPERIENCE AS AN EDITOR 169 

such " Quarterly " existed. There had never risen 
for it any publisher who "knew the American 
people." 

In one of the changes of literary " property/' the 
dwindling " list " of the now venerable Keview fell 
into the hands of people who had courage to give 
Norton and Lowell the charge of it. Soon after, 
Fields, Osgood & Co. bought the Keview. 

" Norton and I have undertaken to edit the 
' North American/ " Lowell writes. " A rather 
Sisyphean job, you will say. It wanted three chief 
elements to be successful. It was n't thoroughly, 
that is, thick and thinly, loyal; it wasn't lively; 
and it had no particular opinions on any particu- 
lar subject. It was an eminently safe periodical, 
and accordingly was in great danger of running 
aground." 

To this " eminently safe" journal Mr. Norton and 
Lowell undertook to give loyalty and life. To the 
little circle which followed in the steps, now falter- 
ing, of the Mutual Admiration Club, they added 
contributors from all latitudes and longitudes. 
Thus the new departure is marked by letters asking 
for articles, — to Motley in Vienna, Howells in 
Venice, Stedman, who was a new writer for them ; 
and, as the reader has seen, Lowell's own work was 
in amount what one would hardly have wished for 
had the Keview furnished his only occupation. 



CHAPTER XI 

POLITICS AND THE WAR 

In 1856, the year when Lowell's name first ap- 
pears as a professor in the Harvard catalogue, he is 
one of eleven professors. In 1891, the year of his 
death, there were fifty-seven professors and assistant 
professors. The number of " tutors " and " instruc- 
tors," to follow the college titles, increases in the 
same proportion. Lowell's name does not appear 
on the list of the " Faculty " in 1855, 1 suppose be- 
cause he was in Europe. The Faculty consisted of 
thirteen gentlemen, of whom President Eliot, then 
one of the junior members, and Professor James 
Mills Peirce are now the only survivors. Of his 
associates in the Faculty, Dr. Walker and Professors 
Felt on, Peirce, Bo wen, and Lovering had been his 
teachers when he was himself an undergraduate 
twenty years before. Of the others, Professor So- 
phocles, older than he, had been Greek professor in 
Amherst before Lowell was at Cambridge. Profes- 
sors Child, Lane, Jennison, Cooke, Chase, Eliot, and 
James Peirce were his juniors. In the cordial and 
simple courtesies of Cambridge life, all these gen- 
tlemen are to be spoken of in any calendar of his 
friends. After his college work begins, his name 
appears on the list of the Faculty. And it remains on 



POLITICS AND THE WAE 171 

the catalogue during the eight years when he was in 
Spain and England as American minister. He went 
to Europe in 1855, after his appointment as profes- 
sor, and remained there more than a year ; he made 
another visit in August, 1872, and remained abroad 
until July, 1874. His proper duties at Cambridge, 
therefore, were between September, 1856, and the 
summer of 1872, and from October, 1874, to his 
appointment as minister to Spain in the spring 
of 1877, covering in both periods nearly nineteen 
years. 

The earlier of these periods — that from 1856 to 
1872 — includes the whole civil war and the most 
acute of the struggles which preceded it. He watched 
with great interest the Kansas trials, and had at one 
time the idea of taking Hosea Biglow out to Kansas 
to send his prophecies from what was really the seat 
of war. He was himself learning, and the world 
was learning, that Minerva was not unwilling when 
he wrote prose ; although it was as late as 1846 
that he expressed himself so doubtfully in that mat- 
ter. It is a pity that the best of his political essays, 
in the " Standard," in the " Atlantic," and in the 
" North American," cannot be published together. 
In the " Atlantic " and the " North American " 
there are, for instance, such articles as " The New 
Tariff Bill," " July reviewed by September," " The 
Election in November," " The Pickens-and-Stealin's- 
Rebellion," " The Question of the Hour," " The 
President's Policy," " The Rebellion, its Causes and 
Consequences," " Reconstruction," " Scotch ' the 
Snake or kill it?" 



172 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

His cousin, Mr. Lawrence Lowell, thus character- 
izes these essays : — 

" During the period of war and reconstruction 
Lowell wrote a number of political essays,, but these 
are not as remarkable as his poetry or his criticism. 
Although very influential in forming public opinion, 
and although containing many wise sayings and 
many striking aphorisms on government, they are, 
in the main, a forcible exposition of the opinions 
held by intelligent Kepublicans. Beginning with a 
distrust of Lincoln's tentative policy, they finally 
express unbounded admiration for the statesmanship 
that could wait until the times were ripe, and give 
the lead when the people were ready to follow. The 
essays show how thoroughly the writer had become 
estranged from the abolitionists. He regards the 
conflict at the outset, not as a crusade against sla- 
very, but as a struggle to restore order and main- 
tain the unity of the nation as a question of na- 
tional existence, in which the peculiar institution of 
the South is not at issue ; and, although before the 
war was over he saw that no lasting peace was 
possible unless slavery was forever destroyed, he 
held that opinion in common with men who had 
never harbored a thought of abolition before the 
secession of South Carolina. In short, he no longer 
writes as the prophet of 1848, but as a citizen and 
a statesman." 

In an earlier chapter I have already referred to 
the " Anti-Slavery Standard," so long a brilliant 
exception to the dullness, almost proverbial, of what 
are called the " organs " of causes or of societies. 



POLITICS AND THE WAR 173 

Lowell's connection with the " Standard " for many- 
years brought him into close connection with a man 
after his own heart, Sydney Howard Gay, well 
known among all journalists, historians, and men of 
letters in America. He will be remembered for the 
untold services which he rendered to the country in 
and after the civil war, and to good letters, good 
history, and good journalism before the war, in the 
war, after the war, and, indeed, as long as he lived. 

In 1840 it would have been difficult, even for a 
person inside the sacred circle of the abolitionists, 
to explain, in a manner satisfactory to every one, 
the difference between " old organization," " new 
organization," and the shades of feeling and thought 
in either, or among " come-outers " or " come- 
outer " societies, which were neither of the new nor 
old. For an outsider it would have been impossible 
to make such explanations then. And, fortunately, 
any such discrimination is now as unnecessary as it 
is impossible. They were all free lances, who obeyed 
any leader when they chose, and, if they did not 
like his direction, told him so and refused to follow. 
A sufficient section of anti-slavery people, however, 
to carry out their purposes, established the " Anti- 
Slavery Standard." 

At a meeting quite celebrated in those times, 
in which the original Anti-Slavery Society divided 
itself between what was called the " old organiza- 
tion " and the " new organization," the old organ- 
ization, sometimes called the " Garrisonians," deter- 
mined to establish this paper. This was in the year 
1840, and the first editor was a gentleman named 



174 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

Nathaniel P. Rogers, a brilliant and vigorous writer 
from New Hampshire. He died in 1846. His 
essays have been published, with a Life by John 
Pierpont. 

The motto of the new journal was " Without 
concealment and without compromise." It was 
under the general superintendence of what is spoken 
of afterwards as the " executive committee ; " and, 
if I understand it rightly, this executive committee 
was chosen annually at the meetings of the " old 
organization." An outsider, perhaps, would have 
said that Garrison's " Liberator " would answer the 
purpose of an organ; and, so far as devotion to 
the main cause went, of course it would. But Gar- 
rison, on his part, would never have ground the crank 
of anybody's organ. And, on the other side, the 
Anti-Slavery Society did not want, as such, to ac- 
company him on such side-crusades as he might 
wish to undertake in the course of the great enter- 
prise. For an instance, most, if not all, of the peo- 
ple who united to establish the " Standard " would 
choose to vote, if they wanted to do so, and fre- 
quently did vote. But he whom in those days men 
called an abolitionist pure and simple, whom one 
could underwrite as A 1, would have abominated 
any vote at any election. 

This was the explanation given me by the person 
best qualified to answer my question when I asked, 
" Why the ' National Anti-Slavery Standard ' and 
the < Liberator ' ? " 

In 1844 Mr. Gay became the editor of the " Stan- 
dard." He was an abolitionist through and through. 



POLITICS AND THE WAR 175 

He even gave up the study of law, because he felt 
that he could not swear to sustain the Constitution 
of the United States, and so could not enter at the 
bar. He had very rare gifts of editorial promptness 
and sagacity ; and, as the " Standard " itself shows, 
had the unselfishness and the knowledge of men 
which enabled him to engage as fellow-workmen men 
and women of remarkable ability. Henry Wilson 
speaks of him as the man who deserved well of his 
country because he kept the " Tribune " a war paper 
in spite of Greeley. 

Lowell had written before 1846 for the anti-sla- 
very papers, as the reader knows. Mrs. Chapman, 
a lady distinguished among the abolitionists, had 
suggested to Gay that Lowell would give strength 
to the " Standard." How droll it seems now that 
anybody should be advising anybody to engage 
his services ! All the same, Mrs. Chapman did, 
and he was retained to write once a week for the 
" Standard." In an early letter of his to Gay, as 
early as June of 1846, he says that he is " totally 
unfitted " for the position of an " editorial contribu- 
tor." He was sure that Garrison and Mrs. Chapman 
overrated his popularity. " In the next place," — 
this is edifying now, — " if I have any vocation, it 
is the making of verse. When I take my pen for 
that, the world opens itself ungrudgingly before me, 
everything seems clear and easy, as it seems sinking 
to the bottom would be as one leans over the edge 
of his boat in one of those dear coves at Fresh Pond. 
But when I do prose, it is invito, Minervcl. My true 
place is to serve the cause as a poet." 



176 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

In the same letter he suggests what we now call a 
" funny column." He calls it a " Weekly Pasquil." 
" I am sure I come across enough comical thoughts 
in a week to make up a good share of such a corner, 
and Briggs and yourself [Gray] and Quincy could 
help." 

Edmund Quincy began in the " Standard " that 
series of letters signed " Byles," which with infinite 
fun and spirit revealed Boston to the decorous 
senses of those people who had supposed that they 
were the " upper four hundred." The letters were 
afterward carried on in the "Tribune" for many 
years. In this instance, as in the transfer of Mr. 
Gay's services to the " Tribune," the "Standard" 
led the way for some of the signal achievements in 
the interesting history of that paper. 

Lowell's correspondence with Gay is excellent 
reading for young men who have fallen in love with 
their own picture of journalism, and are fascinated 
by the charm of that picture. To us, reading after 
fifty years, it is edifying, not to say amusing, to 
find that, after rather more than a year, the " Execu- 
tive Committee" of the "Standard" feared that 
they were flinging their money away in paying this 
young poet four dollars and eighty cents a week for 
his contributions. Think of that, gentlemen who 
manage the treasuries of weekly or monthly journals 
now ! James Lowell, in the very prime of his life, 
is writing for you. He is just beginning on the 
" Biglow Papers." And you find that the work is 
not worth five dollars a week, and notify your work- 
ing editor that he must be dropped ! 



POLITICS AND THE WAR 177 

Lowell's letter in reply is manly and courteous. 
He even says that he has felt somewhat cramped by 
the knowledge that a corresponding editor ought to 
recognize the views of an " Executive Committee." 
" I have felt that I ought to work in my own way, 
and yet I have also felt that I ought to try to work 
in their way, so that I have failed of working in 
either." 

Young authors may read with interest these words, 
— not too proud : " I think the Executive Commit- 
tee would have found it hard to get some two or 
three of the poems I have furnished from any other 
quarter." "Beaver Brook," for instance, "To 
Lamartine," or several of the early Biglow papers ! 
No ! It would be hard to get them furnished " from 
any other quarter." And the anonymous Executive 
Committee flinched at the four dollars and eighty 
cents which had to be paid for each of these ! With 
one and another such jar, however, the connection 
between Lowell and the " Standard " lasted, in one 
or another form, for four or five years. 

I hope it is not too late for us still to expect a 
full memoir of Mr. Gay's life and work. As a per- 
manent contribution to literature, "The Popular 
History of America " will preserve his memory. It 
is the first of the composite histories wrought by 
the hands of many experts ; but it all went under 
his careful supervision, and ought to be called by 
his name. At Chicago, at New York, in the " Tri- 
bune," and as coadjutor with Mr. Bryant in the 
"Evening Post" office, he showed what his great 
capacity as an editor was. 



178 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

I have never seen in print his story of that fear- 
ful night when Lincoln was killed. But one hears 
it freely repeated in conversation, and I see no 
reason why it should not be printed now. 

With the news of the murder of Lincoln, there 
came to New York every other terrible message. 
The office of the " Tribune/' of course, received 
echoes from all the dispatches which showed the 
alarm at Washington. There were orders for the ar- 
rest of this man, there were suspicions of the loyalty 
of that man. No one knew what the morrow might 
bring. 

In the midst of the anxieties of such hours, to 
Mr. Gay, the acting editor of that paper, there 
entered the foreman of the typesetting-room. He 
brought with him the proof of Mr. Greeley's lead- 
ing article, as he had left it before leaving the city 
for the day. It was a brutal, bitter, sarcastic, per- 
sonal attack on President Lincoln, — the man who, 
when Gay read the article, was dying in Washington. 

Gay read the article, and asked the foreman if he 
had any private place where he could lock up the 
type, to which no one but himself had access. The 
foreman said he had. Gay bade him tie up the type, 
lock the galley with this article in his cupboard, 
and tell no one what he had told him. Of course 
no such article appeared in the " Tribune " the next 
morning. 

But when Gay arrived on the next day at the 
office, he was met with the news that "the old man" 
wanted him, and the intimation that " the old man " 
was very angry. Gay waited upon Greeley. 




SYDNEY HOWARD GAY 



POLITICS AND THE WAR 179 

" Are you there, Mr. Gay ? I have been looking 
for you. They tell me that you ordered my leader 
out of this morning's paper. Is it your paper or 
mine ? I should like to know if I cannot print what 
I choose in my own newspaper ! " This in great 
rage. 

"The paper is yours, Mr. Greeley. The article 
is in type upstairs, and you can use it when you 
choose. Only this, Mr. Greeley : I know New York, 
and I hope and believe, before God, that there is 
so much virtue in New York that, if I had let that 
article go into this morning's paper, there would not 
be one brick upon another in the 6 Tribune ' office 
now. Certainly I should be sorry if there were." 

Mr. Greeley was cowed. He said not a word, 
nor ever alluded to the subject again. I suppose 
the type is locked up in the cupboard of the " Tri- 
bune " office at this hour. 

It was by this sort of service that Mr. Gay earned 
Mr. Wilson's praise that " he kept Mr. Greeley up 
to the war." 

Mr. Lowell's correspondence with Mr. Gay makes 
one wish that we had Mr. Gay's side as well. The 
letters which are printed in Lowell's " Correspond- 
ence " are well worthy the study of young journal- 
ists. 

It will be readily seen that here was a college pro- 
fessor well in touch with the responsibilities of the 
time. Writing occasionally for such a paper as the 
" Standard," responsible for the tone and politics 
of the " Atlantic," and afterwards of the " North 
American," he could tell the world what he thought 



180 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL ' 

in those times of storm and earthquake ; and he did 
not fail to use his opportunity. Meanwhile the war 
was drawing nearer and nearer. Strictly speaking, 
the war began when Franklin Pierce, on the part 
of the government of the United States, acting by 
the United States marshal, took possession of the 
Hotel of the Emigrant Aid Company, in Lawrence, 
Kansas, in May, 1856, and destroyed it. 

The class of youngsters who entered Harvard 
College in 1856, when Lowell began his work there, 
graduated in 1860, and were eager to go into the 
army. Of that class sixty-four enlisted, of whom 
thirteen were killed. Thirty-six of the next class 
enlisted in the army or navy; thirty of the next 
class ; and thirty-two of the class of 1863. Lowell 
was in personal relations with most of these young 
men. He had five young relatives who died in the 
service, — General Charles Russell Lowell and his 
brother James Jackson Lowell, William Lowell Put- 
nam, Warren Dutton Russell, and Francis Lowell 
Dutton Russell, who was only twenty when he died. 
William Putnam was the son of the sister whose 
account of the childhood of Lowell has been already 
referred to. 

Mr. Leslie Stephen has referred pathetically to 
Lowell's white-heat patriotism as the war went on, 
— he watching it with such associations. " The 
language of the most widely known English news- 
papers at the time could hardly have been more 
skillfully framed for the purpose of irritating Lowell, 
if it had been consciously designed to that end. . . . 
He showed me the photograph of a young man in 



POLITICS AND THE WAR 181 

the uniform of the United States army, and asked 
me whether I thought that that lad looked like c a 
blackguard.' On my giving the obvious reply, he 
told me that the portrait represented one of the 
nephews he had lost in the war. Not long after- 
ward I read his verses in the second series of the 
' Biglow Papers/ the most pathetic, I think, that he 
ever wrote, in which he speaks of the ' three likely 
lads,' 

' Whose comin' step there 's ears thet won't, 
No, not lifelong, leave off awaitinV " 

These "three likely lads" were General Charles 
Russell Lowell, his brother James Jackson Lowell, 
and William Lowell Putnam, their cousin and the 
poet's nephew. 

In the autumn of 1860 Charles Lowell took charge 
of the Mount Savage Iron Works at Cumberland, 
Maryland. On the 20th of April, 1861, hearing of 
the attack made the preceding day in Baltimore on 
the Sixth Massachusetts Regiment, Lowell instantly 
abandoned his position and set out for Washington. 
He put himself at once at the disposal of the gov- 
ernment, and about the middle of June received his 
commission as captain in the Third Regiment of 
United States Cavalry. For distinguished services 
at Williamsburg and Slatersville he was nominated 
for the brevet of Major. At South Mountain, in 
bearing orders to General Reno, he showed a bravery 
which excited universal admiration. In recognition 
of his gallantry in this battle, General McClellan 
assigned to Lowell the duty of presenting to the 
President the trophies of the campaign. In Novem- 



182 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

ber, 1862, he was ordered to report to Governor 
Andrew for the purpose of organizing the Second 
Massachusetts Cavalry, of which he was appointed 
Colonel. In the May following he left Boston with 
his regiment, and was soon placed in command 
of the cavalry of the Department of Washington. 
For many months he was occupied in resisting the 
incursions of Mosby. " I have often said," writes 
Colonel Mosby, " that of all the Federal commanders 
opposed to me, I had the highest respect for Colonel 
Lowell, both as an officer and as a gentleman." It 
was at Cedar Creek, while leading his command, 
that he received his mortal wound. His commission 
as Brigadier-General of Volunteers, " determined on 
days before," was signed on the 19th of October, 
too late for him to wear the honor he had earned so 
well. " We all shed tears," said Custer, " when we 
knew we had lost him." 

General Lowell's brother, James Jackson Lowell, 
was but twenty-three years old when the war began. 
He was born in the very Elmwood where, as this 
writer hopes, this reader feels at home. His early 
youth was spent in Boston, where he was a student 
in the Public Latin School. Before he entered col- 
lege, the family had removed to Cambridge again. 

He spent the four years from 1854 as an under- 
graduate in Cambridge, taking his bachelor's degree 
in 1858, at the second Commencement after his 
uncle entered on his duties there. He took the 
highest place in his class when he graduated; a 
favorite with his class, "liked as much as he was 
admired." u While he would walk a dozen miles 



POLITICS AND THE WAR 183 

for wild flowers, skate all day, and dance as long as 
the music would play, he found no study too dry, 
and would have liked to embrace all science and all 
literature." 

He showed the interest in public affairs which 
such a young man ought to show, and such as was 
suggested to him by his ancestry on his father's 
side and his mother's alike. He was at the Dane 
Law School, — the school connected with the Uni- 
versity at Cambridge, — when the war broke out. 
James Lowell and his cousin, William Putnam, also 
at the Law School, undertook to raise recruits for 
a Massachusetts regiment. After some delay they 
and their recruits were assigned to the Twentieth 
Kegiment, Lowell taking a commission as First 
Lieutenant, and Putnam that of Second. They 
received their commissions on the 10th of July. 
They were sent to the front in September. 

After a few days in Washington they were 
ordered to Poolesville in Maryland, and they were 
encamped there until October 20. On the 21st of 
October they were led across the Potomac by Gen- 
eral Lane, who atoned for this mistake by his life. 
The wretched and useless battle of Ball's Bluff 
was fought, Putnam was so severely wounded that 
he died in a few days, Schmitt, their captain, was 
wounded, and Lowell shot in his thigh. He re- 
turned home until his wound was healed, and joined 
his regiment on the Potomac as the movement of 
McClellan against Richmond went forward. He saw 
rather than joined in the fighting at Fair Oaks, and 
on the 26th of June writes, in good spirits, that 



184 JAMES KUSSELL LOWELL 

he has hopes of seeing Richmond before the month 
is over. But, alas ! on the 29th the regiment was 
ordered to join McClellan's retreat to the Potomac, 
and on the 30th he received a mortal wound at 
Glendale. 

His cousin, William Lowell Putnam, was an only 
son. The friend and teacher of the two, Professor 
Child, says : " A nobler pair never took the field. 
Putnam, with his fair hair, deep eyes, and uncon- 
taminated countenance, was the impersonation of 
knightly youth. He was our Euryalus, quo pul~ 
chrior alter nonfuit JEneadum. The cousins were 
beautifully matched in person, mental accomplish- 
ments, and pure heroism of character." 

I copy Professor Child's words with a certain 
special tenderness for a personal remembrance of 
" Willie Putnam," as most of his friends called 
him. I was in Salignac's drill corps, before the war 
began, at a time when the drill was carried on in 
a large hall, at the corner of Summer Street and 
Washington Street in Boston. The hall was not 
long enough for the battalion to form in line, and 
two right angles were necessary, so that we stood at 
parade with our backs to three sides of the wall. 
Day by day, for I know not how many weeks, in 
presenting arms at parade, I " presented arms," 
not so much to the commanding officer, as to this 
beautiful boy, who at the distance of thirty or forty 
yards presented arms to me. Among three or four 
hundred young men, most of them younger than I, 
I did not know his name. In June he was enlist- 
ing men, and Salignac and the drill corps, and I 





ROBERT GOULD SHAW 

WILLIAM LOWELL PUTNAM CHARLES RUSSELL LOWELL 

JAMES JACKSON LOWELL 



POLITICS AND THE WAR 185 

among the rest, saw him no longer. In October 
he was killed ; and then for the first time, when I 
saw his picture, did I know that the noble, cheerful 
face I had so often saluted was that of this fine 
young man, in whose career, for many reasons, I 
was interested so deeply. 

Such were three of five relatives who went to the 
war, almost from Elmwood itself. One sees how 
Lowell's personal interest in them affected all he 
wrote in poetry or prose in the great crisis. 

Professor Child, whom I cited in the passage 
above, took the most eager interest in the war, as, 
indeed, in one way or another, all the professors at 
Cambridge did. He was one of the Faculty who 
had joined it since they dragged Lowell through 
college " by the hair of his head," as he and Cutler 
dragged Loring through. Eager in everything in 
the way of public spirit, Professor Child made it his 
special duty to prepare a " Song-book " for the sol- 
diers who were going to the field. Who is doing it 
now for the liberators of to-day ? He made every- 
body who could, write a war-song, and he printed a 
little book of these songs, with the music, which 
he used to send to the front with every marching 
regiment. I had the pleasure of telling him once 
that I had heard one of his songs sung by some pri- 
vates of our Twenty-fourth in the camp before Ber- 
muda Hundred. This curious collection is already 
rare. It was called " War Songs for Freemen," and 
was dedicated to the army of the United States. 
Professor Child enlisted Charles T. Brooks, the 
Newport poet, Dr. Hedge, Dr. Holmes, and Mrs. 



186 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

Howe, both the Lelands, Mrs. T. Sedgwick, and 
some anonymous writers, to join in furnishing songs. 
He included some good translations from the Ger- 
man. He wrote two or three himself, which show 
his fun and audacity. Here is the last verse of 
" The Lass of the Pamunky : " — 

" Fair hands ! but not too nice or coy 

To soothe my pangs with service tender. 
Soft eyes ! that watched a wasted boy, 

All loving, as your land's defender ! — 
Oh ! I was then a wretched shade, 

But now I 'm strong and growing chunky — 
So Forward ! and God bless the maid 

That saved my life on the Pamunky ! " 

Here is a new verse of " Lilliburlero : " — 

" ' Well, Uncle Sam/ says Jefferson D., 
Lilliburlero, Old Uncle Sam, 
* You '11 have to join my Confed'racy,' 
Lilliburlero, Old Uncle Sam. 
'Lero, lero, that don't appear, O ! That don't appear,' says Old 

Uncle Sam. 
* Lero, lero, filibustero ! That don't appear,' says Old Uncle Sam." 

Mr. Child was appointed professor in rhetoric in 
1851, and by a new appointment in 1876 professor 
of the English language and literature. It is inter- 
esting to see that, although the use of the English 
language had been admirably taught at Harvard 
long before, there was no professor of English liter- 
ature for two centuries and a half after the college 
was founded. Is there one at Oxford or at the 
English Cambridge to-day ? 

How well fitted Mr. Child was for these positions 
his published series of ballads and other works show. 
His recent death gives me a right to speak here of 




FRANCIS JAMES CHILD 



POLITICS AND THE WAR 187 

the tender love with which he was regarded by all 
the Cambridge circle, and of the unselfish interest 
with which he gave time and work to the help of 
all around him. One is glad to see this interest 
surviving in the lives of his children. 

I am not sure that this story of those days is 
quite decorous enough for print. But I will risk it. 
Professor Calvin Ellis Stowe, who was a classmate 
of Longfellow' s, told me that in the early days 
of '61 he met Longfellow in the streets of Boston. 
Both of them were in haste, but Longfellow had 
time enough to ask if the Andover gentlemen were 
all alive to their duty to the nation. St owe said 
he thought they were, and Longfellow said, " If the 
New Testament won't do, you must give them the 
Old." Professor Stowe told me this in August of 
1861, after the anniversary exercises of the class 
at Andover. The division between Eehoboam and 
Jeroboam had naturally played a very important 
part in the chapel exercises, with the obvious dis- 
tinction that in our time it was the North which was 
in the right and the South which was in the wrong. 

I am permitted to copy the following scraps from 
the journal of one of Lowell's pupils at that time : — 

" In '64, when I had come back from a service 
mostly civil, but under direction of General Saxton, 
on Port Eoyal Islands, I had to give the college 
steward a bond to secure whatever dues I might 
incur. Lowell volunteered to sign the bond, and to 
say that he had perfect confidence in me. Decem- 
ber 22 he called at Divinity Hall, to invite me to 
a five o'clock Christmas dinner ; again on Christmas 



188 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

to turn the hour into four o'clock. The other 
guests were John Holmes and Caroline Norton, a 
young man and a niece of the host. Each man 
was impressed into escort duty to a woman, and 
I was Mabel's escort to the table. 

" The dinner and the chat were delightful. 
Holmes and Lowell sharpened their wits upon each 
other, while the rest of us ate and laughed. I was 
the only obdurate that would not take a smile of 
wine. After dinner we were entertained with some 
of Blake's curious pictures, with snowflake shapes, 
and with books. Lowell had been ' weeding his 
back garden,' and he offered me the little stock of 
duplicates and obsoletes : a Webster's quarto dic- 
tionary was one of the books, and the evening was 
Christmas ; but the boys had a notion that his in- 
come was almost pinchingly small for a man in his 
place ; so, in the hope that he might second-hand 
them off for five or ten dollars, I declined them, 
and have been sorry ever since. I should have 
known that if he wanted to sell them he would not 
even have shown them to me, and that he did want 
to put them where they would be helpful and well 
used." 

I might almost say that such daily associations 
with the war account for the form and spirit alike 
of the " Commemoration Ode." No one who was 
present when that ode was delivered can forget the 
occasion. It was in every regard historical. Peace 
was concluded, and the country drew a long breath 
with joy for the first time. An immense assembly 
of the graduates came together. As many of them 




HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW (i860) 



POLITICS AND THE WAR 189 

as could filed into the church for religious services. 
Under the lead of Mr. Paine, the professor of music, 
a college chorus sang " Salvam fac rempublicam." 
I think this was the first time that the music now 
well known was used for those words. On such 
occasions at Cambridge the graduates entered the 
church in the order of their seniority. I remember 
that on that occasion the attendance was so large 
that my own class, which was twenty-six years out 
of college, were among the last persons who could 
enter the building. We stood in the aisles, because 
there were no seats for us. 

After these services the whole body of the alumni 
sat at a Spartan college feast in that part of " the 
yard," as we say at Cambridge, which is between 
Harvard and Holden Halls. And there Lowell de- 
livered his " Commemoration Ode." His own intense 
interest was evident enough, but it was reflected in 
what I might call the passionate interest with which 
people heard. It was said afterwards, and I think 
this appears in his letters, that the final business of 
writing this wonderful poem had all been done in 
forty-eight hours before he delivered it. But then, 
as the reader sees, it had been more than four years 
in the writing. The inspiration had come from day 
to day, and he poured out here the expression of 
what he had been thinking and feeling, in joy and 
sorrow, in hope and fear, in learning and forget- 
ting, for all that period of crisis and strain. 

I believe I may tell — and it shall close these 
broken reminiscences of the war — a story which 
was familiarly told at the time, and which is true. 



190 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

I have heard it in one or two forms, and to secure 
accuracy now I have asked the gentleman whom I 
may call the hero of the story for his own account 
of it. He was one of Lowell's pupils, in the " bat- 
tle class " of 1862. He has sent it to me in the 
following words : — 

" I spent the night before Commemoration Day 
on a lounge in Hollis 21, the room of my classmate 
Hudson, who was a tutor. I could not afterwards 
remember dreaming of anything in particular ; but 
as I woke I heard, 

* And what they dare to dream of, dare to die for.' 

"'Kather a good sentiment/ I said to myself; 
c and it seems to be appropriate to the day,' — then 
just dawning. And so I dropped off again. 

" The dinner was spread, as you remember, in 
the green bounded by Harvard, Hollis, and Holden. 
My seat was just about in the middle. Mr. Lowell 
was a few rods nearer Holden and a good deal 
nearer Hollis, — about under the more southerly 
window of Hollis 21. When he rose, there was a 
prolonged closing of the ranks, — I remember the 
rustle of many feet on the grass, — and Mr. Lowell 
waited till all was quiet before he began reading. 
As he read, when he came to the words, 

' Their higher instinct knew 
Those love her best,' — 

I began to feel, not that I had heard this before, 
but that something familiar was coming. 

* Who to themselves are true,' 

went on the reader. ' Hullo ! ' said I to myself, ( I 
ought to know the next line.' 



POLITICS AND THE WAK 191 

1 And what they dare ' — 

" i Yes, but it is n't going to rhyme/ and this 
without distinctly repeating the rest of the line." 

When my friend had observed that " die for " 
would not rhyme with " true/' Lowell came to his 
relief by saying, 

" And what they dare to dream of, dare to do." 

So well authenticated a story of sympathy and 
telepathy seems worth repeating. 



CHAPTER XII 

TWENTY YEARS OF HARVARD 

Mr. Lowell's real connection with the daily 
work of the college ceased in 1876, when he ac- 
cepted the offer of the mission to Spain. It cov- 
ered the period when he wrote most, and when, as 
his cousin has said so well, in the passage I have 
cited, his work in prose and poetry proved to be 
most satisfactory to himself. His duty afterwards 
as a diplomatist, in Spain and in England, was of 
value to the country and of credit to himself. And 
his life as a man of letters had prepared him for 
such work. But, all the same, it is as a man of 
letters that he will be most generally remembered. 

During the twenty-one years from 1855 to 1876 
the college was going through the change which 
has made it the university which it is. It had 
not only enlarged in the number of pupils, but 
the purposes and range of all persons connected 
with it widened with every year. This change 
from the " seminary," as President Quincy used to 
call it, to the university of to-day has not been 
wrought by any spasmodic revolution planned by 
either of the governing bodies at any given time. 
It has come about, healthy and strong, in the growth 
of the country — let us even say in the improvement 
of the world. 



TWENTY YEARS OF HARVARD 193 

Presidents Quincy, Everett, Sparks, and Walker 
were all engaged in promoting the evolution of the 
university. After the close of that series come 
Thomas Hill and Charles William Eliot, the present 
incumbent, to whose energy, foresight, and courage 
so much of what may be called this revolution is 
due. I have already made some notes here of Mr. 
Quincy and Dr. Walker. It was in Walker's admin- 
istration that Lowell returned to the college as 
Smith professor. 

Cornelius Conway Felton, who succeeded Dr. 
Walker, had been the Greek professor, and had dis- 
tinguished himself in his place as an editor of Homer 
and in papers on subjects of Greek literature. Per- 
haps he soon wore out his hopes for classes of school- 
boys. Certainly in my time and Lowell's, when we 
were undergraduates, he made little or no effort as 
a teacher to open out the work of the Greek poets 
whom we read. Alkestis or the Iliad were literally 
mere text-books. All the same, the boys believed 
in Felton. I remember one scene of great excite- 
ment when he was a professor, when we thought we 
were very badly used by the government, as perhaps 
we were. There was a great crowd of us in front 
of Holworthy, and Felton appeared on the steps 
of Stoughton or at a window. Somebody shouted, 
" Hear Felton ! hear Felton ! he tells us the truth," 
and the noisy mob was still to listen. A man might 
be glad to have these words carved on his tombstone. 

When with other men of letters, Dr. Felton was 
charming. And his kindness to his old pupils till 
they died was something marvelous. The published 



194 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

Sumner letters, the Longfellow letters, and other 
correspondence of the men of that time, with many 
of his careful reviews, and an occasional pamphlet, 
perhaps on some subject of controversy now forgot- 
ten, show how highly he was prized in his day and 
how well he deserved such esteem. For many years 
he was one of the most acceptable writers for the 
"North American Eeview." He died, suddenly, 
after less than two years of service as President. 

President Felton's successor, Thomas Hill, was 
a graduate of Harvard, as all her presidents have 
been since Chauncy died in 1672. Dr. Hill was of 
a noble family, — if we count nobility on the true 
standards, — who were driven out of England by the 
Birmingham riots of 1791, and settled near Philadel- 
phia. Dr. Hill was appointed president of Antioch 
College, Ohio, in 1859, and, after a very successful 
administration there, he was inaugurated at Cam- 
bridge in 1862. At Antioch he had succeeded 
Horace Mann in the presidency. 

Dr. Hill's health failed, and he resigned in 1868, 
leaving behind him charming memories of his devo- 
tion to duty and of the simplicity of his charac- 
ter. I called upon him once, with Dr. Newman 
Hall, when he was in this country. It was delight- 
ful to see the enthusiasm with which Dr. Hill spoke 
of the pleasure he expected in the evenings of the 
approaching winter, from studying, with his charm- 
ing wife, the new text of the Syriac version of the 
New Testament, which had then just been edited 
by Cureton. He was one of the most distinguished 
mathematicians of his time. Here is an amusing 



TWENTY YEARS OF HARVARD 195 

note to him from Lowell about the arboriculture of 
the college yard. 

My dear Dr. Hill, — I have been meaning 
to speak to you for some time about something 
which I believe you are interested in as well as 
myself, and, not having spoken, I make occasion 
to write this note. Something ought to be done 
about the trees in the college yard. That is my 
thesis, and my corollary is that you are the man to 
do it. They remind me always of a young author's 
first volume of poems. There are too many of 'em, 
and too many of one kind. If they were not 
planted in such formal rows, they would typify very 
well John Bull's notion of " our democracy," where 
every tree is its neighbor's enemy, and all turn out 
scrubs in the end, because none can develop fairly. 
Then there is scarce anything but American elms. 
I have nothing to say against the tree in itself. I 
have some myself whose trunks I look on as the 
most precious baggage I am responsible for in the 
journey of life ; but planted as they are in the yard, 
there 's no chance for one in ten. If our buildings 
so nobly dispute architectural preeminence with cot- 
ton mills, perhaps it is all right that the trees should 
become spindles ; but I think Hesiod (who knew 
something of country matters) was clearly right in 
his half being better than the whole, and nowhere 
more so than in the matter of trees. There are two 
English beeches in the yard which would become 
noble trees if the elms would let 'em alone. As it 
is, they are in danger of starving. Now, as you 



196 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

are our Kubernetes, I want you to take the 'elm in 
hand. We want more variety, more grouping. We 
want to learn that one fine tree is worth more than 
any mob of second-rate ones. We want to take 
a leaf out of Chaucer's book, and understand that 
in a stately grove every tree must " stand well from 
his fellow apart." A doom hangs over us in the 
matter of architecture, but if we will only let a tree 
alone, it will build itself with a nobleness of propor- 
tion and grace of detail that Giotto himself might 
have envied. Nor should the pruning as now be 
trusted to men who get all they cut off, and whose 
whole notion of pruning, accordingly, is " ax and 
it shall be given unto you." Do, pray, take this 
matter into your own hands — for you know how 
to love a tree — and give us a modern instance of a 
wise saw. Be remembered among your other good 
things as the president that planted the groups of 
evergreens for the wind to dream of the sea in all 
summer, and for the snowflakes to roost on all 
winter, and believe me (at the end of my sheet, 
though not of my sermon) always cordially yours, 

J. R. Lowell. 

Elmwood, December 8, 1863. 

After President Hill's resignation, Dr. Andrew 
Preston Peabody acted as president until the 
appointment in 1869 of Mr. Eliot. 

I have already spoken, in one connection or an- 
other, of the professors to whom Lowell was most 
closely drawn, — with one or two exceptions. Dr. 
Asa Gray, the distinguished chief of botany in 



TWENTY YEAES OF HARVARD 197 

America, made his home a centre of all that was 
charming and interesting in the delightful circle of 
Cambridge society. Nothing could be more inter- 
esting than the simplicity of the spirited conversa- 
tion of this most learned man, and the ease with 
which, while he really knew almost everything that 
was worth knowing, he spoke, with utter absence of 
effect or visible erudition. Where a working gar- 
dener would tell you with delight that this or that 
plant was the " Tomfoolaria eruditissima" Gray 
would say, " Oh ! that 's one of those Australian 
sandworts." When he was still as fresh and cheer- 
ful as a boy, I heard him say, " It is great fun to 
be seventy years old. You do not have to know 
everything." 

Another of his colleagues who gave distinction to 
the college, in America and in Europe, was the late 
Josiah Parsons Gooke, whose position as a teacher 
and in the ranks of original students in chemistry 
is so well known. 

Lowell's own charming poem to Agassiz will be 
recalled by every one who cares for his life at Har- 
vard. Not long after Agassiz had been invited from 
Switzerland to lecture before the Lowell Institute, 
he was appointed to a professorship in Cambridge, 
and he accepted the appointment. He lived in 
Cambridge from that time until he died, loving and 
beloved, in 1873. Mr. John Amory Lowell, the 
cousin of our Lowell, in his plans for the Lowell 
Institute, engaged Louis Agassiz to deliver one of 
their courses in 1847. His arrival in America 
may be spoken of as marking an era in education. 



198 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

Indeed, if the Lowell Institute had never done 
anything else for America than it did when it " im- 
ported Agassiz," it would have a perpetual claim 
for our gratitude. With his arrival there was ended, 
once and forever, the poor habit of studying Nature 
through the eyes of other observers. Men learned 
again the lesson which makes them see where they 
look. For it may be fairly said that Agassiz cre- 
ated here the school of original study which has 
for a generation past directed the progress of natu- 
ral science in America. I believe I ought to say 
that the phrase " imported Agassiz," which I have 
ventured to quote, is Lowell's own. In his address 
at the Quarter-Millennial of the college he had 
the hardihood to say that Harvard had not yet 
developed any first-rate educator, " for we imported 
Agassiz." 

I have never forgotten the enthusiasm of Agas- 
siz's audience the first time I ever heard him. His 
subject was the First Ascent of the Jungfrau, the 
maiden mountain which had never been scaled by man 
until Agassiz led the way. He told us, with eager 
memory, of all the preparations made for what men 
thought the hopeless invasion of those untrodden 
snows, of the personnel of the party, of their last 
night and early morning start at some encampment 
halfway up ; and then, almost step by step, of the 
sheer ascent at the last, until, man by man, one after 
another, each man stood alone, where two cannot 
stand together, on that little triangle of rock which 
is the summit. " And I looked down into Swisser- 
land." As I heard him utter these simple words of 




LOUIS AGASSIZ 



TWENTY YEARS OF HARVARD 199 

triumph, I said that Mr. Lowell might take credit 
to himself for bringing before our audience the no- 
blest and best specimen, so far discovered, of that 
greatest species of mammalia — long studied, but 
as yet little known — of the very finest type, from 
the widely scattered genus of the race of man. 

The simplicity of Agassiz's mode of address cap- 
tivated all hearers. He put himself at once in touch 
with the common-school teachers. He had none of 
that absurd conceit which has sometimes parted col- 
lege professors from sympathetic work with their 
brothers and sisters who have the first duty, in the 
district and town schools, in the infinite work of 
instruction and education. 

Agassiz's Cambridge life brought into Cambridge 
a good many of his European friends, and broke 
up the strictness of a village coterie by the accent, 
not to say the customs, of cosmopolitan life. To 
say true, the denizens of the forest sometimes inter- 
mixed closely with the well-trained European scholars. 
There used to be a fine story of a dinner-party at 
Dr. Arnold Guyot's when he lived at Cambridge. 
An admiring friend had sent Guyot as a present 
a black bear, which was confined in the cellar of 
his house. Another friend had sent him a little 
barrel of cider, which was also in the cellar. As the 
dinner went on upstairs, ominous rumblings were 
heard below, and suddenly an attendant rushed in 
on the feast, announcing that the bear had got loose, 
had been drinking the cider, had got drunk, and 
was now coming upstairs. The guests fled through 
windows and doors. I am not sure that Lowell was 



200 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

one of them, but the anecdote belongs in notices of 
his friends. 

I should not dare speak of a " village coterie," 
nor intimate that at Cambridge there were men who 
had never heard of Fujiyama, or of places, indeed, 
not twenty miles away, but that these anecdotes 
belong a generation and more ago. 
s/ One of Lowell's fellow professors told me this 
curious story, which will illustrate the narrowness 
of New England observation at that time. There 
appeared at Cambridge in the year 1860 a young 
gentleman named Robert Todd Lincoln, who has 
been already quoted, and is quite well known in this 
country and in England. This young man wished 
to enter Harvard College, and his father, one Abra- 
ham Lincoln, who has since been known in the 
larger world, had fortified him with a letter of intro- 
duction to Dr. Walker, the president of the college. 
This letter of introduction was given by one Stephen 
A. Douglas, who was a person also then quite well 
known in political life, and he presented the young 
man to Dr. Walker as being the son of his friend 
Abraham Lincoln, " with whom I have lately been 
canvassing the State of Illinois." When this letter, 
now so curious in history, was read, Lowell said to 
my friend who tells me the story, " I suppose I am 
the only man in this room who has ever heard of 
this Abraham Lincoln ; but he is the person with 
whom Douglas has been traveling up and down in 
Illinois, canvassing the State in their new Western 
fashion, as representatives of the two parties, each 
of them being the candidate for the vacant seat in 



TWENTY YEARS OF HARVARD 201 

the Senate." What is more, my friend says it is 
probably true that at the moment when this letter 
was presented by young Kobert Lincoln, none of 
the faculty of Harvard College, excepting Lowell, 
had ever heard of Abraham Lincoln. The story is 
a good one, as showing how far it was in those days 
possible for a circle of intelligent men to know lit- 
tle or nothing of what was happening in the world 
beyond the sound of their college bell. 1 v 

It would be almost of course that, in a series of 
reminiscences which are not simply about Lowell 
but about his friends, I should include some careful 
history of the Saturday Club, which has held its 
regular meetings up to this time from the date of 
the dinner-party given by Mr. Phillips, as already 
described in the history of the " Atlantic." But 
that story has been so well told by Mr. Morse in 
his memoir of Dr. Holmes, and by Mr. Cooke in 
the " New England Magazine," that I need hardly 
do more than repeat what has been said before. 
In Morse's " Life of Dr. Holmes " there are two 
pages of admirably well-selected pictures of some of 
the members best known. When the reader sees the 
names of gentlemen who have attended the club 
more or less regularly in forty years, he will readily 
understand why Emerson and Holmes and Lowell 
and others of their contemporaries have spoken of 
the talk there as being as good talk as they had 

1 This anecdote arrested attention when it was first published, 
and I received more than one note explaining to me that it could 
not be true. 

All the same it is true. And I took care to verify the dates of the 
several steps of the story. 



202 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

ever heard anywhere. Holmes's list, besides him- 
self, was Emerson, Hawthorne, Longfellow, Lowell, 
Motley, Whipple, Whittier, Professors Agassiz and 
Peirce; John Sullivan Dwight, Governor Andrew, 
Richard Henry Dana, Jr., and Charles Sumner, 
Presidents Felton and Eliot, Professors Norton and 
Goodwin, William Hickling Prescott, Thomas Gold 
Appleton, John Murray Forbes, John Elliot Cabot, 
Henry James, William Dean Howells, Thomas 
Bailey Aldrieh, William Morris Hunt, Charles Fran- 
cis Adams, Francis Parkman, James Freeman Clarke, 
Judge Lowell, Judge Hoar, George Frisbie Hoar, 
and Bishop Brooks. 

One of the last times when I saw Lowell and 
Emerson together was on the 18th of July, 1867, 
when Emerson delivered his second Phi Beta Kappa 
address. It had never happened before, I think, 
that the same orator should have spoken twice be- 
fore Phi Beta Kappa with an interval of thirty years 
between the orations ; nor is it probable that such 
a thing will ever happen again. In 1837 the word 
Transcendentalist was new, and it was considered 
"good form" to ridicule the Transcendentalists, 
and especially to ridicule Emerson. Yet he had his 
admirers then, especially his admirers in college, 
where the recollections of his poetry and philosophy, 
as shown when he was an undergraduate, had not 
died out. A few years ago I printed his two Bow- 
doin prize dissertations, written when he was seven- 
teen and eighteen years of age, and they are enough 
to show that the boy, at that age, was father of 
the man. When he spoke in 1837, the oration was 




CHARLES ELIOT NORTON 



TWENTY YEARS OF HARVARD 203 

received in a certain patronizing way by his seniors. 
Mr. Cabot says, " He was regarded as a promising 
young beginner, from whom a fair poetical speech 
might be expected/' and the address was spoken of 
with a gay badinage such as could not be called 
criticism. I remember, at the frugal dinner-party 
of Phi Beta Kappa after the oration of 1837, Mr. 
Edward Everett, who was an enthusiastic Cambridge 
man and college man and Phi Beta man, said with 
perfect good nature of the Transcendentalists, that 
their utterances seemed to him to be compounded 
like the bolts of Jupiter, — 

" Tres imbris torti radios, tres nubis aquossB 
Addiderant, rutili tres ignis, et alitis Austri," 

and made this extempore translation : — 

u Three parts were raging fire, and three were whelming water, 
But three were thirsty cloud, and three were empty wind ! " 

Emerson was too young and too modest, and had 
too much real regard and respect for Everett, to 
make the reply which one thinks of now : " What- 
ever the bolts were made of, they were thunder- 
bolts ; and from Vulcan's time to this time, people 
had better stand out from under when a thunder- 
bolt is falling." I can see Emerson now, as he 
smiled and was silent. 

After thirty years people did not say much about 
" thirsty cloud "or " empty wind." Emerson was 
in the zenith of his fame. He was " the Buddha 
of the West," — that is Doctor Holmes's phrase. 
He was u the Yankee Plato," — I believe that is 
Lowell's. And Phi Beta made amends for any 



204 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

vague questioning in the past by the enthusiasm 
with which it received him for the second time. 

A queer thing happened on that morning. Emer- 
son had a passion to the last for changing the order 
of his utterances. He would put the tenth sheet 
in place of the fifth, and the fifth in place of the 
fifteenth, up to the issue of the last " extra " of an 
oration. It was Miss Ellen Emerson, I think, who 
took upon herself the duty of putting these sheets 
in order on this occasion, and sewing them so stiffly 
together that they could not be twitched apart by 
any sudden movement at the desk. But the fact 
that they were sewed together was an embarrass- 
ment to him. What was worse was that he met his 
brother, William Emerson, that morning. I think 
they looked over the address together, and in do- 
ing so it happened that Waldo Emerson took Wil- 
liam Emerson's glasses and William took Waldo's. 
Waldo did not discover his error till he stood in the 
pulpit before the assembly. Worse than either, 
perhaps, some too careful janitor had carried away 
the high desk from the pulpit of the church, and 
had left Emerson, tall and with the wrong spec- 
tacles, to read the address far below his eyes. It 
was not till the first passage of the address was 
finished that this difficulty of the desk could be 
rectified ; but the whole audience was in sympathy 
with him, and the little hitch, if one may call it so, 
which this made seemed only to bring them closer 
together. 

The address will be found in the eighth volume 
of his works, and will be remembered by every one 



TWENTY YEAKS OF HARVARD 205 

who heard it ; but, on the whole, what impresses me 
the most in memory is the hearty thoroughness and 
cordiality of Lowell's congratulations when Emerson 
turned round after finishing the oration. "Par 
nobile fratrum" as one said ; and one felt glad to 
have seen two such men together on such a day. 
Lowell himself said of it, a few days later : — 

" Emerson's oration was more disjointed than 
usual even with him. It began nowhere and ended 
everywhere; and yet, as always with that divine 
man, it left you feeling that something beautiful 
had passed that way, something more beautiful than 
anything else, like the rising and setting of stars. 
Every possible criticism might have been made on 
it, except that it was not noble. There was a tone 
in it that awakened all elevating associations. He 
boggled, he lost his place, he had to put on his 
glasses; but it was as if a creature from some fairer 
world had lost his way in our fogs, and it was our 
fault and not his. It was chaotic, but it was all 
such stuff as stars are made of, and you could not 
help feeling that if you waited awhile all that was 
nebulous would be hurled into planets, and would 
assume the mathematical gravity of system. All 
through it I felt something in me that cried, i Ha, 
ha ! to the sound of trumpets ! ' " 

On the 9th of July, 1872, LoweU and Mrs. Lowell 
sailed for Europe, without any plans, as he himself 
says. They remained abroad two years. They 
landed in England, but early in the winter he es- 
tablished himself, for six months as it proved, in 
Paris. They were in a nice little hotel there, where 



206 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

he is still remembered cordially, — the Hotel de 
France et Lorraine. Here they lived quietly from 
November to the next summer. 

He was in Paris in the last years of M. Thiers. 
The interests of politics centred on the relations 
between President Thiers and the Commission of 
Thirty, — long since, I am afraid, forgotten by this 
reader. Lowell writes of Thiers's resignation, which 
closed his long career of public life, " I think it was 
the egotism of Thiers that overset him rather than 
any policy he was supposed to have." 

Of this sojourn in Paris a near friend of his gives 
me the following pleasant note : — 

" In the little office of the Hotel France et Lor- 
raine, Rue de Beaune, Paris, hangs a fairly good 
likeness of James Kussell Lowell, a large photo- 
graph, I think, taken some years before his death. 
It is, and has been for twenty years and more, the 
presiding presence of the little sanctum where 
Madame and Monsieur sit and make out their (very 
reasonable) bills and count their gains. The hotel 
is still a most attractive retreat for a certain class 
of us, who like quiet and comfort without display. 
Kue de Beaune is a narrow little street leading off 
the Quai Voltaire, which runs parallel to the Seine. 
On the opposite shore of the river are the fine 
buildings of the Tuileries and the Louvre ; be- 
tween flows the steady stream, covered with little 
steamers, pleasure-boats, bateaux-mouches, tugs. The 
great Pont-Royal crosses the river, very near Rue 
de Beaune, to the Rue des Pyramides through the 
gardens of the Tuileries. It is one of the prettiest 



TWENTY YEARS OF HARVARD 207 

though not the gayest parts of Paris. The bridge 
and adjoining streets are crowded with life on foot 
and on omnibus; but take one step into Rue de 
Beaune, and you find silence, peace, and repose. 

" In the winter of 1872-73 Mr. and Mrs. Low- 
ell were living at this modest but well-known hotel, 
in its grandest apartments au premier. Somewhat 
dark and dingy even then, more so now, but neat 
and comfortable. The house must be very old. It 
is built round a little cour, or rather two little 
courts ; and a winding staircase leads up through 
the principal part to the landings of the several 
stories. There were two parlors, if I remember, 
communicating. The walls were lined with book- 
cases, filled with Mr. Lowell's books, and other 
furniture of the cosy, comfortable order, when they 
established themselves in these congenial quarters. 

"Here they lived, read, wrote, talked, enjoyed 
themselves. Mr. Lowell was probably writing some- 
thing of importance, but he had at that time no 
public or official business, no pressing engagements. 
He was, in fact, doing just what he pleased all the 
time. Of course his acquaintance was large in the 
American colony and among the best French so- 
ciety of Paris, but I do not think he troubled him- 
self about it much. He delighted in prowling 
about the book-stalls which abound in the Quai 
Voltaire, where old rubbish in print is displayed 
along the parapet of the river in tempting openness, 
and where a real book-worm may rummage and find 
something really valuable among apparently hope- 
less stuff. He loved a quiet little dinner (in their 



208 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

rooms) a quatre, or, still better, a trois, where the 
food was good enough, and the talk excellent ; his 
cigar came afterwards. Mrs. Lowell, his sympa- 
thetic and congenial companion, sat smiling and 
interested at such times, like the proper wife of a 
good talker, not talking much herself, but showing 
in her pleasant, refined face that she appreciated and 
enjoyed the fun. Although her health, even then, 
was delicate, she was strong enough to share his life 
and interests. What they both liked the most was 
the quiet of their own fireside, and the unmolested 
pursuit of literary pleasures, stimulated by all the 
resources of the great city, without any parade, or 
the burden of a crowd of engagements. They 
might have been any humdrum couple of small 
means, passing the winter in the most delightful 
city in the world, with all the resources in them- 
selves of wit, intelligence, and mutual affection." 

While Lowell was in Europe, King Amadeo, the 
Italian sovereign of Spain, abdicated, and the re- 
public of Castelar was born. Lowell was in Venice 
in November, 1873, at the time of the Virginius 
massacre. But he does not seem to have known, 
better than any others of his countrymen in Europe, 
how near we were to war with the Spanish repub- 
lic. Yet in that month Mr. Fish had instructed 
Mr. Sickles to break off relations with the SpAiish 
government unless they could reform their Cuban 
administration. " If Spain cannot redress these 
outrages, the United States will." Such were the 
words in his telegram to Madrid of November 15, 
1873. 



TWENTY TEARS OF HARVARD 209 

Lowell had once and again visited his old friend 
"William Story in his residence in Italy. The Storys 
had visited America in 1865. With Mrs. Lowell 
he now had an opportunity to visit them in Kome. 

Since Mr. Story went to Eome with his wife in 
1847 he had been devoting himself to sculpture, 
but he had never forgotten his American friends ; 
and his light pen kept him in the memory of many 
of those who did not see his statues. His Cleopa- 
tra had won general approval. When the Lowells 
visited Eome in 1873 Story's Alkestis was new, and 
Lowell writes of it with genuine pleasure. u It was 
so pleasant to be able to say frankly, ' You have 
done something really fine, and which everybody 
will like.' I wonder whether I shall ever give that 
pleasure to anybody." This, observe, dear reader, 
as late as 1874. 

Lowell returned to America in the summer of 
that year, arriving in Elmwood on the Fourth of 
July. 

I myself do not believe that a long residence in 
Europe is of great help to an American gentleman 
or lady so far as an estimate of one's own country 
goes. They are apt to read the London " Times's " 
view of America, or that contained in Galignani's 
newspaper, or possibly the Paris edition of the New 
York " Herald." These utterances from day to 
day are not encouraging ; but if they were true and 
adequate, one need not complain of discouragement. 
The truth is, however, that they are not adequate, 
and therefore they are not true. For one month 
when I was in Europe in 1873 the daily American 



210 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

dispatch in the " Times " was confined to the for- 
tunes of some wretched Modoc Indians in Califor- 
nia, who were hiding among their rocks and were 
being killed one by one by sharpshooters. For the 
rest there was practically nothing, — nothing which 
showed me that brave boys were growing into brave 
men, that good girls were growing into pure women, 
that universities and libraries and Chautauquas and 
summer schools were giving a liberal education to 
half my country, that merchants were telling the 
truth and acting the truth, and inventors were re- 
newing the world. 

I go a little out of the way to say this, because 
I observe that Mr. A. Lawrence Lowell, in his 
admirable notice of his cousin's life, suggests that 
his stay in Europe in 1872-73 to a certain extent 
modified his notion with regard to America and 
American politics. Mr. A. Lawrence Lowell uses 
the following words : — 

" During his stay in Europe Lowell had been dis- 
tressed at the condition of politics in this country, 
and annoyed at the expressions of contempt for 
America it had called forth on the other side of the 
AtlantiCo On his return he was horrified by the 
lack of indignation at corruption iu public life, for 
the intense party feeling engendered by the war 
was still too strong to permit independent judgment 
in politics. He expressed his disgust in a couple of 
poems in i The Nation,' called ' The World's Fair ' 
and ' Tempora Mutantur.' The verses were not 
of a high order of poetry, and at first one regrets 
that Hosea Biglow did not come out once more to 




THE HALL, ELMWOOD 



TWENTY YEARS OF HARVARD 211 

do battle with the spoils system, as he had with 
the slave power long ago; but the subject was 
not one that made it possible. Among the archaic 
sculptures buried on the Acropolis after the sack 
of Athens by Xerxes, and recently unearthed, is a 
fragment of a pediment representing Hercules and 
the Hydra. The hero is on all fours alongside the 
monster in a cave, a fitting type of the way political 
corruption must be fought at the present day. The 
war with slavery, like that of Perseus with the 
dragon, could be waged on wings with a flashing 
sword ; but the modern reformer must go down on 
his hands and knees and struggle with reptiles in 
the dark." 

Whether Lowell were right or wrong in thinking 
that a new wave of Philistinism had overwhelmed 
the administration of America is of no great im- 
portance to us here. I think he was wrong. I 
think that the American people govern America, 
and that the intrigues or devices of the men who 
" run with the machine " are of much less importance 
than very young people suppose, who read very poor 
though very conceited weekly newspapers. How- 
ever that may be, this country has received great ad- 
vantage from Lowell's determined interference and 
interaction in our politics in the years which followed 
his return in 1874. So vigorous were his writings 
that he was at once recognized as a pure public 
leader. I have always found that the " machine " 
is eager to join hands with any man of literary, 
inventive, or business ability who is willing, as the 
phrase is, to " go into politics." Certainly this was 



212 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

so in Lowell's case, and in the autumn of 1876 he 
was asked to take a seat in Congress which we call 
in Massachusetts the South Middlesex seat. It was 
the seat which Edward Everett had captured years 
before, in the face of the machine of his time. It 
was the seat which William Everett afterwards cap- 
tured, by fine audacity, although he was not even a 
resident in the district. Lowell might have gone 
to the Congress of 1877 if he had chosen. He de- 
clined the position, estimating correctly his abilities 
and inabilities as a member of a legislative body, 
" as it seems to me." But, with the same desire to 
show that men of character and ability were inter- 
ested in the Republican party, the nominating con- 
vention made him an elector for the presidency. 

It was in the famous election after which Hayes 
was declared to be President by the electoral com- 
mission. I will say in passing that, as acting presi- 
dent of the New England Emigrant Aid Company, 
it had been my business to see to the transfer of 
two or three thousand voters from the North into 
Florida in the years after the rebellion, and that it 
was no matter of surprise to me, therefore, that the 
electoral commission pronounced that Florida had 
given a Republican vote. I believe Florida would 
give such a vote to-day, if there were any chance of 
its being counted. 

When it was clear that the election of Mr. Hayes 
would depend on a single ballot in the electoral 
college, there were intriguers so mean as to suggest 
that possibly Mr. Lowell might be persuaded — I 
suppose by considerations which such men under- 



TWENTY YEARS OF HARVARD 213 

stand better than I do — to give a vote for Mr. 
Tilden. Any such hopes as these Mr. Lowell very 
promptly suppressed, as such a man can. That lit- 
tle correspondence, however, called attention to his 
name, even in the somewhat dark council chambers 
of the people who distrust " them littery fellers." 

Fortunately for America also, in all turns of our 
politics there has been the same sense of the value 
of literature and of the sphere of men of letters 
which has given the world about all the good diplo- 
macy which the world has ever had. Somewhat as 
Franklin was sent to France because the French 
had heard of him before, quite as Motley was sent 
to Vienna because he knew something about history 
and could speak the language of Germany, exactly 
as Mr. Irving had been sent to Spain as our minis- 
ter, the new administration made advances to Mr. 
Lowell to ask him if he would not represent us at 
one of the European courts. 

The following notes may be published now, for 
the study of annalists, as most of the people who 
are referred to are dead : — 

(April 13, 1876.) " What I meant to say was 
that if, when the Russian embassy was offered me, 
it had been the English instead, I should have hesi- 
tated before saying no. But with the salary cut 
down as it is now, I could n't afford to take it, for 
I could not support it decently." 

(April 19, 1876.) "I return Mr. Fish's letter. 
There is no more chance of their sending me to St. 
James's than to the moon, though I might not be 
unwilling to go. On the old salary I might manage, 



214 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

and it might do my health good. I have little doubt 
that it was offered to L. with the understanding 
that he would decline. I have not seen him for a 
few days. But it is too large a plum for anybody 
not i inside politics.' It is the only mission where 
the vernacular sufficeth. Meanwhile, you will be 
amused to hear that I am getting inside politics after 
a fashion. I shall probably head the delegation 
from our ward to the state convention." 

Four foreign missions were offered him. He 
declined all, but in declining said, perhaps without 
much thought, that if they had offered him the 
mission to Spain, he would have gone. Mr. Evarts 
was Secretary of State, and it may readily be ima- 
gined that he was able " to manage it." And so it 
was that this professor in Harvard College, who had 
kept his eyes so far open that he knew of the exist- 
ence of Abraham Lincoln in 1860, was appointed to 
represent the United States in Spain. 



CHAPTER Xm 

MR. LOWELL IN SPAIN 

The reader ought to understand that while the 
Spanish mission has always been spoken of by 
uninformed people as a somewhat lazy corner in 
that somewhat old-fashioned salon which takes the 
name of " Diplomacy," the United States minister 
in Spain has always been walking amidst hot coals, 
or explosive friction matches. Some drowsy people, 
whose principal business in life has been to cut off 
the coupons from securities which other people had 
earned for them, waked up with surprise when they 
learned that this country had at last taken up the 
gauntlet of war. The United States meant to finish 
the job which Drake and Burleigh and Howard and 
Elizabeth left unfinished three centuries ago. But 
other people were not surprised. If they have 
cared about the history of the hundred years which 
have made the United States a nation, — and which 
have seen ten or twelve changes either of constitu- 
tion or of dynasty in Spain, — men have known that 
open questions, some of them of great seriousness, 
have all the time entangled the diplomatic web 
which was woven between the two nations. 

Into the heritage of these complications Lowell 
came when — in a pacific time — he presented his 



216 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

credentials at Madrid. The sovereign then on the 
throne was Alfonso XII., and one of Lowell's earli- 
est dispatches describes the ceremonies attending 
his marriage with Mercedes, the young princess. 
The minister of foreign affairs was Don Fernando 
Calderon Collantes. The short-lived republic which 
began in 1873, on the abdication of Amadeo of 
Savoy, had, in its time, given way, and the old 
Bourbon family had returned in the person of 
Alfonso XII. 

In the short period of the republic I happened 
to be editing the magazine called " Old and New," 
in Boston. Like most intelligent Americans, I 
hoped to see republican government extend itself in 
Europe. 

I wanted, at all events, that our readers should 
know the truth about it. I struck high, as an edi- 
tor always should do. So I waited on Charles 
Francis Adams, the same who had carried through 
our negotiations with England in the civil war with 
such masterly success. If there ever were a Kepub- 
lican and Democrat, it was he ; if there ever were a 
person confident in the strength of America, it was 
he ; and I certainly expected his sympathy in the 
cause of the new-born Spanish republic. 

I asked him to write our article on Spain and 
the new republic. He listened to me with all his 
perfect courtesy ; and then he advised me — I 
might say he bade me — take no stock in the enter- 
prise. I pressed him ; I said, " Surely, we want to 
extend republican institutions in Europe ? " And 
he smiled, sadly enough, and said, " Do not expect 



MR. LOWELL IN SPAIN 217 

anything of Spain, Mr. Hale. The truth is not in 
them" 

In this old Bible axiom of Covenanters and of 
Puritans is the secret of all the difficulties between 
England and Spain in Drake's time, between this 
country and Spain in Jefferson's day, and in each 
of the crises of negotiation since. Spain and her 
statesmen really think that a lie well stuck to is as 
good as the truth. Our representatives do not think 
so. The difference makes a jar when the neophyte 
in diplomacy discovers it. 

In the unpublished " Pickering correspondence " 
are some curious memoranda which show what Jef- 
erson thought and planned. Jefferson had seen the 
real Philip Nolan killed, and nine American compan- 
ions of his kept in lifelong imprisonment in Mexico 
because the Spanish government violated its own 
passports. This all began as early as 1801. In 
1825 Mr. Alexander Everett, our minister in Spain, 
offered the Spanish government one hundred mil- 
lions for Cuba. Under Mr. Polk's government, 
twenty years after, the offer was renewed. Mr. 
Soule, our minister in Madrid between 1853 and 
1855, complicated matters by his personal quarrels. 
He fought a duel with Turgot, the French min- 
ister, and incurred the dislike, naturally enough, 
of the French government. At a conference of 
three American foreign ministers at Ostend in 1854, 
Buchanan, Mason, and himself, Soule pressed the 
importance of the annexation of Cuba to the United 
States, and carried with him both of his coadjutors. 

But it is not at all necessary that we should enter 



218 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

into the details of these complications. The history 
of all this diplomacy has been admirably written by 
Professor Hart, and is published in " Harper's Maga- 
zine" of June, 1898. We should probably have 
gone to war with Spain at Mr. Soule's suggestion, 
but that at that moment, in 1854 and 1855, the 
weak government of that weakest of men, Franklin 
Pierce, was in very hot water at home. The ad- 
ministration had offended the whole North by its 
operations in Kansas, and it was no time to ask for 
a war which seemed likely to end in the annexation 
of another slave State to the Union. Mr. Soule 
was recalled, and some sort of modus vivendi was 
patched up which carried us through the civil war. 
Mr. Lincoln appointed Mr. Koerner as our minister 
in Spain, who was succeeded by Mr. John Parker 
Hale. 

One is glad to say that at this time the drift 
of the somewhat wayward movements of Spanish 
administration was in our favor. A curious little 
anecdote, which I think has never been printed, 
illustrates this ; and as it has an indirect bearing on 
after diplomacy, I will repeat it here. After our 
civil war had ground along for nearly three years, 
Louis Napoleon, as will be remembered, took a hand 
in it. He formed the ingenious plan of uniting 
other nations in a change of the international law 
governing blockades. The admiralty law of the 
world at present extends the jurisdiction of any 
nation for one marine league from its shores. If, 
therefore, a blockade-runner could get within three 
miles of Jamaica, Cuba, or Porto Kico, he was safe 



MR. LOWELL IN SPAIN 219 

from any interference from our blockading fleet. 
Napoleon ingeniously proposed that, instead of one 
league, this limit of local sovereignty should be ex- 
tended to three leagues from shore. He knew well 
enough that England would never consent to this 
change ; but he had that audacity which enabled 
him to persuade the Spanish minister to come into 
his plan. 

Maps of the West Indies are now plenty, and any 
reader who will look at the position of Cuba, Porto 
Rico, and the little French islands in the West 
Indies will see how seriously such an extension of a 
neutral limit would have hindered the operations 
of our blockading fleets. All this negotiation was 
conducted with great secrecy, and orders were sent 
from Spain to the West Indies, instructing the local 
authorities there to extend threefold the range of 
their dominion over the sea. These orders had 
already gone when Mr. Horatio Perry, our secretary 
of legation at that time, got wind of this treachery 
of our ally. 

What Mr. Perry did in this issue was wise. He 
told his wife. She went immediately and told the 
Duchess of Montpensier, who had none too great 
love of Louis Napoleon, " the nephew of his uncle," 
and the occupant of Louis Philippe's throne. She 
told her sister, the queen. The queen sent at once 
for Mr. Perry. 

He told her what the emperor had done, and 
what her own ministers had done. I suppose he 
said, " You are injuring your best friends, — at the 
solicitation of this intriguer, whom you hate, and 






220 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

who is your worst enemy." The queen said this 
was the first she had heard of the matter, and she 
would send for her prime minister. 

So she did. And he came. And she asked him 
if this thing had been done. And he confessed that 
it had ; Her Majesty had signed the order on such 
or such a day. 

" But no one told me what it meant/' said poor 
Isabella. " No one told me that this was a heavy 
blow to my American allies." 

No. No one had told her. The minister ex- 
plained that as well as he could. If Her Majesty 
disliked it, he was sorry, but he was too late to help 
it. Why too late? the queen asked. Because a 
steamer had gone to the West Indian fleet with the 
orders which changed one league to three leagues. 

Then Queen Isabella spoke the words which, as I 
count it, were the best words of her life : — 

" It is not too late for me to accept your resigna- 
tions." 

And when it came to that, it proved that the 
Senor Don did not want to resign, and the other 
Senores Dons did not want to resign, and they 
found a fast steamer to take out orders rescinding 
the other orders. And so the Emperor Napoleon 
got a slap in his face, and so the blockade was main- 
tained for the next year. 

And so Spain scored one on her private account 
with the Washington government, and Isabella II. 
found one decent thing on the credit side when she 
stood at the bar of St. Peter or history. 

Whoever will refer to the published state papers 



MR. LOWELL IN SPAIN 221 

will find no reference to this interesting incident. 
It is the sort of thing they leave out in printing. 
But you can see that it must have taken place in the 
autumn of 1863, if you will read between the lines. 

As I have said, the intelligent reader of these lines 
has read Professor Hart's admirable review of the 
diplomacy of the United States and Spain regarding 
Cuba for a hundred years ; or, if he has not read it, 
he had better read it as soon as he can find the 
" Harper's " for June, 1898. He will learn that in 
that century there were but two cases of direct in- 
terference with the destinies of Cuba, one by Presi- 
dent John Quincy Adams in 1826, and one by Pre- 
sident Grant in 1875. At the same time he will 
find that there were filibusters in 1849, 1851, again 
in the years 1868-78, again in 1884-85, when the 
American administration gave these filibusters nei- 
ther aid nor comfort. In 1854 and 1873 there came 
reasons for war, and they were not regarded. Sim- 
ply, these references to events of the utmost impor- 
tance will show the reader what were the traditions 
of our legation in Madrid when Mr. Lowell arrived 
there, in August of 1877. 

I must have talked with him about the Spanish 
politics of his time, for I saw him often in London, 
just before I visited Spain in 1882, and I traveled 
there with the benefit of his instructions. But I 
kept no notes of what he said, and I dare not refer 
any of my own impressions directly to him. For 
myself in Spain I had only the poor chance which a 
traveler of forty days has to learn from the daily 
newspapers, from table-d'hote talk, and from inter- 



222 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

views, too short, with intelligent men of all parties 
and professions. 

I conceived a very high respect for the rank 
and file of the Spanish people. Ignorant ? Yes, if 
reading and writing are the tests of ignorance, for 
only one fifth of the population can read their own 
language. But the people themselves, the average 
people, as I saw them, seemed to me a very civil, 
friendly, self-respecting, thoughtful, and industrious 
people. They were ready to oblige a stranger, and 
they did not expect a penny or a shilling, as an 
Englishman or an Irishman does when he has obliged 
a stranger. 

I see that careful students of the position now 
say that the class of people in administration in 
Spain, the people who make and unmake ministries 
and dynasties, are more absolutely separate from 
what I call the rank and file than anywhere else in 
the world. I had a suspicion of this when I was in 
Spain. 

At the same time I observed that the circulation 
of the daily newspapers in Madrid was as great as 
is that of the papers in Boston, the two cities being 
near the same size. They were bitter and violent in 
their satire and in their attacks on each other. I 
think there were three bright and well-illustrated 
comic dailies, each with a large colored cartoon. 
Here, I think, was the tribute to the people who 
could not read. I suppose that the proportion of 
people who can read is much larger in Madrid than 
in the whole nation. 

Sagasta was at the helm in 1882, as he is in 1898. 



MR. LOWELL IN SPAIN 223 

I find that I wrote of him then, " If you trusted the 
newspapers, you would say that there is only one 
man in Spain, or possibly two, who wanted Sagasta 
to stay in, — that this one was Sagasta himself, — 
that the other was possibly his confidential private 
secretary. You would say that everybody else was 
wild to have such an absurd pretender pushed from 
his throne, and every morning you would be sure 
that he would fall before the next day, and would 
be at once forgotten." 

But at the same time I wrote, " As it seems to 
me, Sagasta is one of the ablest men in Europe, and 
I think the king has as high an opinion of Sagasta 
as any of us can form. . . . And I think the king 
is a remarkable young man, and that if he can hold 
on for five years longer, as he has for the last eight, 
he will be counted not only as one of the wisest 
sovereigns in Europe, but as one of the wisest of the 
nineteenth century." 

This, so far as the young king goes, is very 
strong; it now seems absurd. But one hopes so 
much from young kings ! and this fine fellow — 
he was that at least — died when he was not thirty- 
one. The first story any one told you of him, when 
I was in Spain, was this : that when he was asked 
to take the crown, after the republic of Castelar 
had broken down, he said, " Yes, I will come if you 
wish. Only, when you want me to go, tell me so, 
and I will go. Remember, all along, that I am the 
first republican in Europe." 

Of the young king, Lowell himself gives his opin- 
ion in this anecdote : — 



224 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

" On Saturday, the 26th [of October, 1878], the 
king received the felicitations of the diplomatic 
body. Among other things, he said to me, i I al- 
most wish he had hit me, I am so tired.' Indeed, 
his position is a trying one, and I feel sure that if 
he were allowed more freely to follow his own im- 
pulses and to break through the hedge of etiquette 
which the conservative wing of the restoration have 
planted between him and his people, his natural 
qualities of character and temperament would make 
him popular." 

To us in America it is interesting to remember 
that in the court of this young king, who made so 
favorable an impression in his short reign of eleven 
years, was one whom we may call an American lady. 
That is to say, Madam Calderon, to whom the im- 
portant charge of the education of his sisters was 
intrusted, was the wife and afterward the widow 
of Calderon de la Barca, a distinguished Spanish 
diplomatist. She was Miss Fanny Inglis, born in 
Scotland, the granddaughter of Colonel Gardner, of 
Preston Pans. In her youth she removed to Boston 
with her sister, Mrs. McLeod, and there was a teacher 
in her sister's school. She was a very brilliant, con- 
scientious, and agreeable person, and as the wife of 
Calderon de la Barca when he was Spanish minister 
to the United States, and afterwards in Mexico, 
made, as she deserved, a wide circle of friends. She 
had the charge of this prince as soon as he needed a 
governess, and of his sisters. The Spanish govern- 
ment showed its appreciation of her services by 
presenting to her a beautiful home, above the Al- 



MR. LOWELL IN SPAIN 225 

hambra, in Granada, where many of her old Ameri- 
can friends subsequently visited her. She died in the 
royal palace at Madrid, in the winter of 1881-82. 

Of our legation in Madrid Lowell himself says, 
in a private note, that the secretary of legation 
whom he found there says that it is the hardest- 
worked legation in Europe. 

I myself have known personally five or six 
gentlemen who have held the position, and all of 
them have given me the same impression. I re- 
member one of these gentlemen told me that he was 
still at work on a claim which one of our captains 
had against the Spanish government for interfer- 
ence with his vessel ten years before. The manana 
policy had dragged the thing along so far. So 
that in that legation one had to keep in mind the 
history of half a dozen Spanish dynasties. 

At this moment, writing when we are in war 
with Spain and the plaza of Santiago de Cuba is 
again historical, it is impossible not to go back a 
quarter of a century. At that time the governor 
of Santiago shot, without trial, in that plaza, fifty- 
four men, most of them American citizens. They 
had been captured in the Virginius, a filibustering 
steamer; but according to any law of any nation 
which pretended to any civilization, they deserved 
and should have received trial. It was then that 
Mr. Fish sent to Mr. Sickles, our minister in Spain, 
the dispatch to which I have referred, "If Spain 
cannot redress these outrages, the United States 
will." 

Why was Spain let off then ? It seems such a 



226 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

pity now. A short shrift then would have saved 
two or three hundred thousand lives which have 
been lost in the barbarism of Spanish administra- 
tion since. Whoever will read the complicated 
correspondence of that year will see that General 
Grant exercised the utmost forbearance. Spain 
was at that moment a republic : what American 
wanted to crush a poor little European republic 
which could hardly hold its head above water? 
The gentlemen in authority in Madrid descended to 
the most pathetic petitions that they might be ex- 
cused, — if only this time we would let them off 
from what they deserved, no such barbarism should 
ever be tolerated again. The minister of foreign 
affairs would come over himself to the American 
legation to plead a postponement of justice. At 
the end Spain promised to pension the families of 
the people her viceroy had murdered. So General 
Grant gave way, and when, four years after, Mr. 
Lowell arrived, it was his duty to show that we had 
forgiven, and were trying to forget. 

Of the foreign dispatches from our ministers, our 
government means to print only that which is 
wholly harmless in future diplomacy. There is, 
therefore, but little of Lowell's in print which bears 
upon the questions most interesting now. But 
once and again he says that, when the Spanish 
government had paid something which it owed, the 
foreign minister would beg that notice might be 
taken of it, as showing their friendly wish to do 
their duty when they could. 

Here is a little scrap, unimportant enough in 



MR. LOWELL IN SPAIN 227 

itself, but fairly pathetic now in its open confession 
by a Spanish minister of the power for reserve or de- 
ception which such a minister has — or thinks he has. 

In inclosing it Lowell says : — 

(April 2, 1878.) " The interpellation of General 
Salamanca may either indicate that there is some 
doubt in the mind of the party to which he belongs 
as to the complete pacification of Cuba, or that he 
thought it a good topic about which to ask a ques- 
tion that might be embarrassing to the ministry. 
The answer of Senor Canovas admits, as you will 
see, that armed resistance still exists, and seems to 
imply even more than it admits. I am not sure 
that it would be safe to draw any inference from 
this, as Senor Canovas has, from the first, shown 
great discretion and reserve with regard to the 
recent events and Cuba." . . . 

(Inclosure.) " Senor Canovas. . . . For the rest, 
the government, in fact, knows concerning the in- 
ternal condition of Cuba, concerning the prelimi- 
naries of capitulation, and concerning other points, 
more than it has hitherto had occasion to lay before 
the members of this body. But this is not what I 
said before ; I did not say that the government had 
not more information on this than it had communi- 
cated to Congress, for if that were the case, I should 
not have had occasion to suggest what I have sug- 
gested. . . . Concerning what preceded the capitu- 
lation, concerning the capitulation itself, concerning 
what the government expects after the capitulation, 
concerning what it believes will result from the 
capitulation, concerning the possible length of the 



228 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

war, concerning the reasons the government has 
for hoping what it may hope and fearing what it 
may fear, — the government has its own knowledge, 
and thinks it inopportune, at present, to enter into 
discussion. But concerning the fact of the forces 
which have submitted, concerning what remains to 
be done in the way of pacification, the government 
has no kind of secret." 

Senor Canovas was the minister who was mur- 
dered last year. 

With such cares, and in such difficult surround- 
ings, Lowell spent the close of 1877 and the years 
1879 and 1880. He was then summoned, very un- 
expectedly, to transfer his residence to London as 
United States minister to England. 

In the mean time, with his astonishing power of 
work, he not only attended curiously well to the 
work of the legation, but had devoted himself 
sedulously to the study of the Spanish language 
and literature. His private letters have the most 
amusing and interesting references to such studies. 
When he was presented to the king, he made his 
speech in English, the king answered him in Span- 
ish, then came forward and exchanged a few compli- 
ments in French. But very soon it appears that 
he was determined not to be dependent on any in- 
terpreter, or on the accomplishment of any of the 
foreign officers with whom he had to do. " I am 
turned schoolboy again, and have a master over me 
once more, — a most agreeable man, Don Hermine- 
gildo Giner de los Rios, who comes to me every 
morning at nine o'clock for an hour. We talk 






MR. LOWELL IN SPAIN 229 

Spanish together (he does n't understand a word of 
English), and I work hard at translation and the 
like." And again : " This morning I wrote a note 
to one of the papers here, in which my teacher 
found only a single word to change. Was n't that 
pretty well for a boy of my standing ? " 

This he writes to his daughter and to Miss Nor- 
ton : " I like the Spaniards, and find much that is 
only too congenial in their genius for to-morrow. 
I am working now at Spanish as I used to work 
at Old French, — that is, all the time, and with all 
my might. I mean to know it better than they do 
themselves, which is not saying much. . . . This is 
the course of my day : get up at eight ; from nine, 
sometimes till eleven, my Spanish professor; at 
eleven breakfast, at twelve to the legation, at three 
home again and a cup of chocolate, then read the 
paper and write Spanish till a quarter to seven, at 
seven dinner, and at eight drive in an open carriage 
in the Prado till ten, to bed twelve to one." 

He writes to a friend in 1878 that he found that 
the minister of state for foreign affairs sometimes 
smoked a pipe in the secrecy of home. " I was sure 
he must be blistering his tongue with Spanish mun- 
dungus, and sent him a package of mine. He writes 
to say, ' It is the best I ever smoked in my life ; 
I had no idea there was anything so good.' So I 
sent him yesterday ten more packages, and have 
promised to keep his pipe full for so long as I am 
here." 

Of his own work in his vocation as diplomatist he 
says : "lam beginning to feel handier in my new 



230 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

trade, but I had a hard row to hoe at first. All 
alone, without a human being I had ever seen before 
in my life, and with unaccustomed duties, feeling as 
if I were beset with snares on every hand, obliged 
to carry on the greater part of my business in a 
strange tongue, it was rather trying for a man with 
so sympathetic and sensitive a temperament as mine, 
and I don't much wonder the gout came upon me 
like an armed man. Three attacks in five months ! 
But now I begin to take things more easily. Still, 
I don't like the business much, and feel that I am 
wasting my time. Nearly all I have to do neither 
enlists my sympathies much nor makes any call on 
my better faculties. I feel, however, as if I were 
learning something, and I dare say I shall find I 
have when I get back to my own chimney-corner 
again. I like the Spaniards, with whom I find many 
natural sympathies in my own nature, and who have 
had a vast deal of injustice done them by this com- 
mercial generation. They are still Orientals to a 
degree one has to live among them to believe. But 
I think they are getting on. The difficulty is that 
they don't care about many things that we are fools 
enough to care about, and the balance in the ledger 
is not so entirely satisfactory to them as a standard 
of morality as to some more advanced nations. They 
employ inferior races (as the Eomans did) to do 
their intellectual drudgery for them, their political 
economy, scholarship, history, and the like. But 
they are advancing even on these lines, and one of 
these days — But I won't prophesy. Suffice it that 
they have plenty of brains, if ever they should con- 



MR. LOWELL IN SPAIN 231 

descend so far from their hidalguia as to turn them 
to advantage. They get a good deal out of life at 
a cheap rate, and are not far from wisdom, if the 
old Greek philosophers who used to be held up to 
us as an example knew anything about the matter." 

It must have been a joy to Mr. Evarts, in the De- 
partment of State at home, to read Lowell's dis- 
patches when they came. It is reserved for those 
who have the inner keys to the inner bureau of the 
department to read them all ; but here are some 
passages which have been printed in the government 
reports, — because harmless, — which make one un- 
derstand why he was sent to England when there 
was a vacancy there : — 

(February 6, 1878.) " In these days of newspa- 
per enterprise, when everything that happens ought 
to happen, or might have happened is reported by 
telegraph to all quarters of the world, the slow-going 
dispatch-bag can hardly be expected to bring any- 
thing very fresh or interesting in regard to a public 
ceremonial which, though intended for political 
effect, had little political significance. The next 
morning frames of fireworks are not inspiring, un- 
less to the moralist ; and Madrid is already quarrel- 
ing over the cost and mismanagement of a show for 
the tickets to which it was quarreling a week ago." 

..." Whoever has seen the breasts of the pea- 
santry fringed with charms older than Carthage and 
relics as old as Eome, and those of the upper classes 
plastered with decorations, will not expect Spain to 
become conscious of the nineteenth century and 
ready to welcome it in a day." 



232 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

..." A nation which has had too much glory 
and too little good housekeeping." . . . 

Here is the pathetic account of the young queen's 
death. She was the first wife of Alfonso XII. 
The present queen regent (the Austrian) is the 
second : — 

(July 3, 1878.) " Groups gathered and talked in 
undertone. About the palace there was a silent 
crowd day and night, and there could be no ques- 
tion that the sorrow was universal and profound. 
On the last day I was at the palace just when the 
poor girl was dying. As I crossed the great inte- 
rior courtyard, which was perfectly empty, I was 
startled by a dull roar not unlike that of vehicles in 
a great city. It was reverberated and multiplied by 
the huge cavern of the palace court. At first I 
could see nothing that accounted for it, but pre- 
sently found that the arched corridors all around 
the square were filled, both on the ground floor and 
the first story, with an anxious crowd, whose eager 
questions and answers, though subdued to the ut- 
most, produced the strange thunder I had heard. 
It almost seemed for a moment as if the palace itself 
had become vocal. 

. . . " The match was certainly not popular, nor 
did the bride call forth any marks of public sympa- 
thy. The position of the young queen was difficult 
and delicate, demanding more than common tact and 
discretion to make it even tenable, much more influ- 
ential. On the day of her death the difference was 
immense. Sorrow and sympathy were in every heart 
and on every face. By her good temper, good 



MR. LOWELL IN SPAIN 233 

sense, and womanly virtues, the girl of seventeen 
had not only endeared herself to those immediately 
about her, but had become an important factor in 
the destiny of Spain. I know very well what divin- 
ity doth hedge royal personages, and how truly 
legendary they become even during their lives, but 
it is no exaggeration to say that she had made her- 
self an element of the public welfare, and that her 
death is a national calamity. Had she lived, she 
would have given stability to the throne of her hus- 
band, over whom her influence was wholly for good. 
She was not beautiful, but the cordial simplicity of 
her manner, the grace of her bearing, her fine eyes, 
and the youth and purity of her face gave her a 
charm that mere beauty never attains." 

We may call this dispatch the first version of his 
sonnet : — 

DEATH OF QUEEN MERCEDES. 

Hers all that Earth could promise or bestow, 

Youth, Beauty, Love, a crown, the beckoning years, 

Lids never wet, unless with joyous tears, 

A life remote from every sordid woe, 

And by a nation's swelled to lordlier flow. 

What lurking-place, thought we, for doubts or fears 

When, the day's swan, she swam along the cheers 

Of the AlcaU, five happy months ago ? 

The guns were shouting Io Hymen then 

That, on her birthday, now denounce her doom ; 

The same white steeds that tossed their scorn of men 

To-day as proudly drag her to the tomb. 

Grim jest of fate ! Yet who dare call it blind, 

Knowing what life is, what our humankind ? 

Early in 1880 Lowell received unexpectedly a 
request from the Department of State that he 



234 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

would represent the nation in England. He writes 
to his daughter the following interesting account of 
his transfer : — 

" Day before yesterday I was startled with a cipher 
telegram. My first thought was, ' Row in Cuba ! 
I shall have no end of bother ! ' It turned out to 
be this : 6 President has nominated you to England 
[this President was Hayes]. He regards it as essen- 
tial to the public service that you should accept and 
make your personal arrangements to repair to Lon- 
don as early as may be. Your friends whom I have 
conferred with concur in this view.' ' 

Then Mr. Lowell says that he was afraid of its 
effect on Mrs. Lowell, who was recovering from a 
long and desperate illness; but she was pleased, 
and began to contrive how he might accept. He 
goes on, " I answered, ' Feel highly honored by 
President's confidence. Could accept if allowed 
two months' delay. Impossible to move or leave my 
wife sooner.' " 

When I was in Madrid I heard this story. The 
two months' delay did not prove necessary. Just at 
this juncture poor Mrs. Lowell was confined to her 
bed, and had been for some time. It happened that 
a candle set fire to the bed-curtains. The attend- 
ants fell on their knees to implore the assistance of 
the Holy Mother, but Mrs. Lowell sprang up and 
herself took the direction of the best methods for 
extinguishing the flames. So soon as nurses and 
others could be brought into shape, it proved that 
the adventure had not been an injury to their mis- 
tress, but rather an advantage. The doctor was 



MR. LOWELL IN SPAIN 235 

summoned at once, and within a very short time 
was able to say that Mrs. Lowell could be removed 
with care and sent by steamer to England. Mr. 
Lowell was said to have telegraphed at once to 
Washington that he could transfer his residence 
immediately, as he was asked to do. Accordingly, 
by a well-contrived and convenient arrangement, 
the invalid was taken by rail to the sea, thence by 
steamer to England, and arrived there, with her 
husband, with no unfavorable results to her health. 

In this sketch of Mr. Lowell's life in Madrid I 
have not attempted, and indeed have not been able, 
to introduce even the names of the friends in whose 
society Mr. Lowell took pleasure while in Spain. 
But American scholars, and indeed the scholars of 
the world, have been so much indebted to Senor 
Don Pascual de Gayangos, whose recent death has 
been so widely regretted, that I ought not to close 
this chapter without referring to him. 

This gentleman is another of the distinguished 
men born in 1809. In early life he studied in 
France. He visited England and married an Eng- 
lish lady. When he was but twenty-two years of 
age he held a subordinate place in the administra- 
tion at Madrid. He returned to England while yet 
a young man, and resided there.. Articles of his 
will be found in the " Edinburgh Review " at that 
time*, After the Oriental Society published a trans- 
lation by him of " Almakkari's History," he was 
appointed professor of Arabic in Madrid. He had 
studied Arabic under De Sacy. 

Every American student in Spain for the last 



236 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

half-century has been indebted to his courtesy, and, 
I may say, to his authority in Spain. As one of 
the humblest of those students I am glad to express 
their obligation to him. 

His only daughter, a charming lady, married 
Don Juan Kiano, a distinguished archaeologist, who 
is, I think, now in the diplomatic service of the 
Spanish government. Her son, Don Pascual's 
grandson, is secretary to the queen, or has been so 
lately. All of them were near friends of Lowell. 



CHAPTER XIV 

MINISTER TO ENGLAND 

Mr. Lowell had declined the suggestion that he 
should go to England when Mr. Hayes's administra- 
tion came in. But one need not say that when he 
now determined to go to England, he went there with 
the pleasure with which every one of our race visits 
what we still call the " mother country." His an- 
cestry, his education, and the studies in which he 
had taken the very broadest interest, all made him 
love England. 

He was an American through and through, and, 
as his own celebrated address, which I shall speak of 
again, showed to the world, he comprehended de- 
mocracy in its possibilities, in its future, and in its 
present better than almost any man of his time. 
He was better able to show it to the leaders of the 
feudal communities in which he lived, better than 
any other American who could have been chosen. 
For all this, — it would be better to say because of 
this, — he went and came in England with that sort 
of delight which Mr. Edward Everett fifty years 
before described so well : — 

" An American looks at Westminster Abbey and 
Stratford-on-Avon with an enthusiasm which the 
Englishman laughs at as a sort of provincial raw- 
ness." 



238 JAMES KUSSELL LOWELL 

Tliis enthusiasm of the American in England is 
so genuine that one may not speak with adequate 
contempt of the sneers with which banished Irish- 
men ridiculed it, when they had occasion to speak 
of Mr. Lowell while he stayed in the home of his 
ancestors. 

As minister to England Mr. Lowell rendered 
essential service to his country. His firmness, se- 
renity, courtesy, and diligence enabled him to keep 
on the best terms with the members of the English 
cabinet with whom he had to do. He was to a 
remarkable degree, as we shall see, a favorite with 
all classes of the English people. He satisfied the 
administration of President Hayes, who sent him. 
He did not satisfy the more talkative leaders of 
the Irish- Americans, who, to use a happy phrase of 
his, were like an actor who " takes alternately the 
characters of a pair of twins who are never seen on 
the stage simultaneously." 

But nobody could have satisfied them. They 
were in a false position, — so false that even diplo- 
macy of the old fashion could not have satisfied it. 
No man can serve two masters, and no man can be 
a citizen of two nations at the same time. So those 
gentlemen found out who, while, as Irishmen, they 
pressed the Irish people to revolt, fell back under 
the segis of America when they got into trouble. 
For the others, for those who had really made them- 
selves Americans, and meant to remain such, Mr. 
Lowell was more than the advocate. He was their 
fearless guardian. And in such guardianship he was 
always successful. Here, let it be said, first and 



MINISTER TO ENGLAND 239 

last, lie knew nothing of the morals of that diplo- 
macy of the older fashion. He might have directed 
a dispatch wrong, so that Lord Granville should 
read what was meant for Mr. Evarts, and Mr. Evarts 
what was meant for Lord Granville, and no harm 
would have been done. That was his way, — as, be 
it said, it is the way of gentlemen, and, in general, of 
our national negotiations. 

At the same time Lowell made friends in England 
among all classes of people. For a generation the 
line of American ministers had generally been good. 
From time to time we sent one or two fools there, 
usually to get them out of the way of home aspira- 
tions and ambitions. But Mr. Everett, Mr. Law- 
rence, Mr. Bancroft, Mr. Adams, Mr. Welsh, and 
Mr. Motley were all conscientious, intelligent gentle- 
men, who really were as much interested in English 
history and English literature as Englishmen were, 
and " really, you know, they spoke English very 
well, with almost no accent, you know." 

Diplomacy, and the whole business of ambassa- 
dory, is, in fact, about as much out of place in our 
time as chain mail is, or as orders of precedence 
are. But people of sense try to make a new 
diplomacy in which each nation can approach, not 
the government of the other, but the people. Mr. 
Lowell, who could think on his feet, who could 
speak well in public, who had always something to 
say, and who, indeed, liked to say it, had a real 
"calling" in this line. In his English stay he 
made several public speeches which did more good 
than any " state paper," so called, could have done. 



240 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

In private society he was a favorite, as he was every- 
where. In 1882 somebody told me in London the 
story of an invitation which Lord Granville, the 
foreign minister, had sent him. Lord Granville, 
in a friendly note, asked him to dinner, saying at 
the same time that he knew how foolish it was to 
give such short notice " to the most engaged man in 
London." Lowell replied that " the most engaged 
man is glad to dine with the most engaging." 

Also, London is an excellent place in which to 
study, and to learn without studying. And, from 
the first, Lowell enjoyed London and England. 
Mrs. Lowell was able sometimes to receive her 
friends, and even to bear the fatigue of a reception 
at court, and of presenting to the queen American 
ladies who visited London. She made herself most 
welcome in the circle, not large, whom she was able 
to meet in that way. The delicacy of her health, 
however, prevented her husband from attempting 
the more public social functions of hospitality, of 
that kind that consists mostly in calling people to- 
gether to dinners or evening parties. But he was, 
all the same, cordial to all comers from his own 
nation, ready and successful in promoting their 
object, while, as has been said, he was at ease among 
all classes in England. His holidays, if we may call 
them so, were spent privately in visits with friends, 
and for six or seven summers in Whitby, — the 
Whitby of " Marmion," in the north of England, — 
a place of which he was very fond. 

He was presented and began on his formal duties 
in the winter of 1881-82. His stay in England 



MINISTER TO ENGLAND 241 

lasted until June 10, 1885. Mrs. Lowell had died 
in February of that year. 

The first important matter in his negotiations was 
connected with the Irish disaffection. Most general 
readers to-day will have forgotten that an insurrec- 
tion, or plan of insurrection, attributed to the Fenian 
organization, had disturbed Ireland and frightened 
England not long before. The name Fenian was 
taken from Fein McCoil, the Fin-gal of Ossian. 
Lowell, who could never resist a pun which had any 
sense in it, called the Fenians Fai-neants, which, as 
it proved, was fair enough, except that they and 
theirs kept their English masters in alarm. I was 
talking with a Liberal in England in May, 1873, 
and he said, " Why, if you had landed in Ireland, 
you would have been in jail by this time." I asked 
what was the matter with me. He said that my 
crush hat and my broad-toed shoes would have con- 
victed me. Now the shoes had been bought in 
Bristol, only three days before, and I said so. 
" Bristol ? were they ? Well, they knew you were 
a Yankee." That is to say, any one who looked 
like an outsider had to run his chances with the 
Irish constables of the time. 

Among others who were less fortunate than I, 
Henry George was arrested. He was as innocent as 
I, and was at once released, with proper apologies. 

The view which Lowell took, and the dilemma in 
which his Irish clients acted, and even went to 
prison, are well explained in a dispatch from which 
I will make a few short extracts. The whole collec- 
tion of dispatches shows the extreme unwillingness 
of Lord Granville to give offense in America : — 



242 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

MR. LOWELL TO THE AMERICAN SECRETARY. 

March 14, 1882. (Received March 27.) 

In concluding this dispatch I may be permitted 
to add that I have had repeated assurances from the 
highest authority that there would be great reluc- 
tance in arresting a naturalized citizen of the United 
States, were he known to be such. But it is seldom 
known, and those already arrested have acted in all 
respects as if they were Irishmen, sometimes engaged 
in trade, sometimes in farming, and sometimes filling 
positions in the local government. This, I think, is 
illustrated by a phrase in one of Mr. Hart's letters, 
to the effect that he never called himself an Ameri- 
can. He endeavors, it is true, in a subsequent letter, 
to explain this away as meaning American born ; but 
it is obviously absurd that a man living in his native 
village should need to make any such explanation. 
Naturalized Irishmen seem entirely to misconceive 
the process through which they have passed in 
assuming American citizenship, looking upon them- 
selves as Irishmen who have acquired a right to 
American protection, rather than as Americans who 
have renounced a claim to Irish nationality. 

Simply, the view he sustained is that which he laid 
down in two letters written to Mr. Barrows, to be 
read to one of these prisoners, from which here are 
a few extracts. They embody briefly the established 
policy of our government : — 

" The principles upon which I have based my 
action in all cases of applications to me from natu- 



MINISTER TO ENGLAND 243 

ralized citizens now imprisoned in Ireland under the 
6 Coercion ' Act are those upon which our govern- 
ment has acted, and in case of need would act again. 
I think it important that all such persons should be 
made to understand distinctly that they cannot be 
Irishmen and Americans at the same time, as they 
now seem to suppose, and that they are subject to 
the operation of the laws of the country in which 
they choose to live." 

In another letter he says : — 

" If British subjects are being arrested for no 
more illegal acts than those which the prisoner is 
charged with having committed, or of the inten- 
tion to commit which he is justly suspected, it seems 
that, however arbitrary and despotic we may con- 
sider the ' Coercion ' Act to be, we are, neverthe- 
less, bound to submit in silence to the action taken 
under it by the authorities even against our own 
fellow citizens. 

" It should be observed that this act is a law of 
the British Parliament, the legitimate source and 
final arbiter of all law in these realms, and that, as 
it would be manifestly futile to ask the government 
here to make an exception on behalf of an American 
who had brought himself within the provisions of 
any law thus sanctioned, so it would be manifestly 
unbecoming in a diplomatic representative, unless 
by express direction of his superiors, to enter upon 
an argument with the government to which he is 
accredited as to the policy of such a law or the ne- 
cessarily arbitrary nature of its enforcement." 

That neither he nor the American government 



244 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

was hard on the "suspects" appears from several 
letters, of which this illustrates the tenor : — 

TO OUR CONSUL AT LIMERICK. 

You will please see without delay John Mclnerny 
and Patrick Slattery, suspects claiming to be Ameri- 
can citizens and confined in Limerick jail, and say 
to each of them that " in case he should be liberated 
you have authority to pay him forty pounds sterling 
for his passage to the United States/' for which sum 
you may draw upon me at sight. 

This sort of correspondence ended in May, 1882. 
The following letter was practically the end of it. 

TO MR. FRELINGHUYSEN. 

Meanwhile it is nearly certain that all the sus- 
pects, except those charged with crimes of violence, 
will be very shortly set at liberty, thus rendering 
nugatory the most effective argument in favor of 
disorder and resistance to the law. 

To turn from such correspondence to his frank 
relations with the people of England, it is interest- 
ing to see how readily he accepted the modern theory 
of American diplomacy. This makes the foreign 
minister the representative not only of the admin- 
istration, but of every individual among the people. 
It recognizes the people as indeed the sovereign. In 
this view, for instance, the American minister has to 
place rightly the inquiries of every person in the 
United States who thinks that there is a fortune 



MINISTER TO ENGLAND 245 

waiting for him in the custody of the Court of 
Chancery. In such cases the American citizen ad- 
dresses "his minister" directly. On a large scale 
the foreign minister has the same sort of correspond- 
ence as the " domestic minister " at home, of whose 
daily mail half is made up of the inquiries of people 
who have not an encyclopaedia, a directory, or a 
dictionary, or, having them, find it more easy to 
address the clergyman whose name they first see in 
the newspaper. They turn to him to ask what was 
the origin of the Aryan race, or what is meant by 
the fourth estate. 

The reader who has not delved into the diplomatic 
correspondence does not readily conceive of the range 
of subjects which thus come under the attention of 
an American minister abroad, in the present habit, 
which unites the old diplomacy and the formality of 
old centuries with the hustling end-of-the-century 
practice, in which every citizen enjoys the attention 
of the minister. In Lowell's case subjects as vari- 
ous as the burial of John Howard Payne's body, 
the foot-and-mouth disease in cattle, the theological 
instruction in the schools of Bulgaria, the assisted 
emigration to America of paupers from Ireland, and 
the nationality of Patrick O'Donnell occupy one 
year's correspondence. Those of us who think that 
the old diplomacy is as much outside modern life as 
chain mail is, or the quintessences of old chemistry, 
might well take the body of John Howard Payne as 
an object-lesson. 

(1) John Howard Payne wrote " Home Sweet 
Home." 



246 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

(2) 1852. He died and was buried in Tunis, 
where he represented the United States. 

(3) 1882. Mr. W. W. Corcoran thought he 
should like to bury his body in America, with a 
proper monument. 

(4) October. Mr. Corcoran asks the cooperation 
of Mr. Frelinghuysen, our Secretary of State. 

(5) October. Mr. Frelinghuysen writes to Mr. 
Lowell to ask for the intervention of the British gov- 
ernment, because we have no representative in Tunis. 

(6) November. Mr. Lowell writes to Lord Gran- 
ville, the English foreign secretary. 

(7) November. Lord Granville bids Mr. Lister 
attend to it. 

(8) November. Mr. Lister writes to Mr. Reade 
and to Mr. Lowell to say he has done so. 

(9) January, 1883. Mr. Lowell writes to Mr. 
Frelinghuysen to say how far they have all got. 

(10) January. Mr. Frelinghuysen writes to Mr. 
Lowell to ask that the body may be sent to Mar- 
seilles. 

(11) January. Mr. Lowell writes this to Lord 
Granville. 

(12) January. Lord Granville telegraphs to Mr. 
Reade at Tunis, and writes to Mr. Lowell that he 
has done so. 

Meanwhile they become impatient at Washington, 
and the Assistant Secretary telegraphs : — 

January 2. " Have you received news from Tunis 
relative to Payne's remains ? " 

Mr. Lowell telegraphs back, much as if it were 
the answer in the " Forty Thieves: " — 



MINISTER TO ENGLAND 247 

January 3. " Not yet, but presently." 

On the same day, apparently, or 

January 1. Lord Granville receives a telegram 
from Tunis, to say that all has been done, and that 
the remains would be shipped to Marseilles. 

January 6. Mr. Eeade explains all to Lord 
Granville, and also to Mr. Taylor. Every one was 
present at the disinterment who should have been. 

January 12. Mr. Lowell thanks Lord Granville 
and Mr. Currie and Mr. Eeade and all the other 
officials. 

February 9. Mr. Frelinghuysen asks Mr. Lowell 
to thank everybody; and it is to be presumed he 
does so. 

Very well. This required a good deal of red 
tape. But it was very nice of Mr. Corcoran to put 
a monument to the poet of " Home," and somebody 
must do something. 

It is interesting to see how wide are the conse- 
quences of such courtesies, and how important they 
may be. 

Lowell really wanted to serve the American people, 
and any intelligent question addressed to him found 
a courteous and intelligent reply. It would not be 
difficult to give a hundred instances, and if any of 
the diplomats of to-day sometimes groan under the 
burden of such correspondence, let me encourage 
them by copying an autograph letter of his which 
a friend has sent to me this morning. A public- 
spirited gentleman in Minnesota had determined 
that there should be a school of forestry in that 
State. He knew there was such a school in India 



248 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

at Dehradun. He wanted the report of that school, 
and so he sent to the United States legation in 
London to ask for it. Here is Mr. Lowell's reply, 
and it is interesting to know from Mr. Andrews that 
it was of real service in the establishment of the first 
school of forestry of America : — 

Legation of the United States, 
London, March 10, 1882. 

Dear Sir, — On receiving your letter of the 17th 
of February I at once wrote to Lord Harrington, 
who the next day sent me the report, which I now 
have the pleasure of forwarding to you, and espe- 
cially if it helps you in awakening public opinion to 
the conservation of our forests ere it be too late. I 
foresee a time when our game and forest laws will 
be Draconian in proportion to their present culpable 
laxity. 

Faithfully yours, 

J. R. Lowell. 

Hon. C. C. Andrews. 

A foreign minister of America once said to me 
that Diplomacy meant Society, and Society Diplo- 
macy. He meant that the important things are 
done in personal conversation between man and 
man, as they sip their coffee after a dinner-party, 
perhaps. The conclusions thus arrived at get them- 
selves put into form afterwards in dispatches. In 
this view of diplomacy it was fortunate for all parties 
that Mr. Lowell and Lord Granville were the corre- 
spondents who had American affairs in hand, from 
such " emblems " as the American flag on Lord 



MINISTER TO ENGLAND 249 

Mayor's Day round to the nationality of Mr. 
O'Connor. Fortunate, because the two liked each 
other. 

Lord Granville's term of office as foreign secre- 
tary was almost the same as Lowell's as American 
minister. Granville came in with the Gladstone 
ministry in April, 1882, and he went out of office 
with them in 1885. Lowell's personal relations with 
him were those of great intimacy. He not only re- 
garded Lord Granville with cordial respect, but knew 
him as an intimate friend. In 1886 he visited Lord 
Granville at Holmbury, at a time when Mr. Glad- 
stone was also visiting there. " I saw Gladstone the 
other day, and he was as buoyant (boysmi) as when 
I stayed with him at Holmbury, just before he 
started for Scotland. I think the Fates are with 
him, and that the Tories will have to take up Home 
Rule where he left it." 

Lord Granville was very young when he entered 
Parliament, as Mr. Levison Gower, member for 
Morpeth. He is said to have regretted the change 
of work in the House of Lords when he became 
Lord Granville. In 1859, when he was not forty- 
five years old, the queen asked him to form a cabi- 
net, and in 1880 she consulted him with the same 
view again ; but he did not become chief of the 
ministry at either time. He served under Lord 
Palmerston and under Mr. Gladstone, as he had 
done under Lord John Russell. He was, while he 
lived, the leader of the Liberals in the House of 
Lords, always in the minority, whatever the policy 
of the hour, but always cordial, amiable, and con- 



250 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

ciliatory. On Gladstone's retirement in 1878 he 
was spoken of as the real leader of the Liberal party. 
It is said of him that he always kept a friend who 
was once a friend, — that he was willing to yield 
small points in controversy rather than to keep a 
quarrel in existence, and always " sacrificed his per- 
sonal interests to those of his party." 

Such a man is a friend whom one likes to have ; 
and such a character gives point to Lowell's joke, 
which I have cited, which calls him the most en- 
gaging man in London. I remember with pleasure 
the first time I saw him. He was acting as chan- 
cellor of the University of London — as long ago as 
1873. He was presenting the diplomas to those 
who had passed the examinations for degrees of 
that university. This means that two or three hun- 
dred young men, from all parts of Great Britain, 
were presented to him, by the heads of perhaps 
twenty different colleges, to receive this distinction. 
Now, such a formality may be merely a function, as 
stupid to see as stupid to go through. In this 
case there was genuine personal contact between the 
chancellor and the neophyte. As each one of those 
youths, proud or timid, came up, and as Lord Gran- 
ville gave the diploma to each, he detained him, for 
the moment, by some personal word or inquiry, — 
such as you could guess the man who was entering 
life would always remember. With such a man 
Lowell would be sure to be on sympathetic terms. 
And I suppose they met each other, or were in close 
correspondence, almost every day in the " season." 

But Lowell was not only the minister from the 



MINISTER TO ENGLAND 251 

people ; he was a messenger to the people. And he 
had sense enough and historical knowledge enough 
to know that since there has been an America on 
the western side of the Atlantic, the people of Eng- 
land — the rank and file — have been in sympathy 
with the thought and feeling and purposes of that 
American people. When my brother Charles was in 
London in 1863, and the English government was 
acting, on the whole, as badly as it dared toward 
the United States, a member of the cabinet said to 
him one day, " The clubs are against you, Mr. Hale, 
but the people of England are with you." This 
was true then ; it was true in the American Kevolu- 
tion ; it was true in Cromwell's time, — he has no 
title which is more sure than that of the " Friend 
of New England." The same thing is true to-day. 
Now, Lowell never said to himself, " Go to, I will 
address myself to the people of Great Britain," or, 
" The people of Great Britain is one thing, and the 
clubs of London another." But because he was the 
man he was, he was always glad to meet the people 
and the men of the people, and let them really know 
what America is. It is not the America of inter- 
viewers, of excursionists, of nouveaux riches million- 
aires, or of namby-pamby philanthropists attendant 
on international conventions. These are the indi- 
viduals whom the people of England are most apt 
to see. But the people of America, at home, have 
wider interests than theirs, and affairs more impor- 
tant than they have. Lowell felt this in every fibre 
of his life, and if the Workingmen's College in Lon- 
don, or some public meeting at Birmingham, or a 



252 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

Coleridge monument, gave him a chance to give to 
the people of England his notion of what the people 
of America are, and have in hand, why, he was 
most glad to do so. 

This is no place in which to describe or discuss 
his successes as a public speaker in England. It 
was a matter of course that, as soon as he spoke 
once, whoever heard him would be glad to hear him 
again ; and he must have had proposals without 
number for his assistance in public dinners, at the 
unveiling of monuments, and in addresses of wider 
range and of more permanent importance. 

In the two volumes of admirable memoirs of Eng- 
lish life which Mr. Smalley has published, one chap- 
ter is given quite in detail to the description of 
Lowell's remarkable welcome among Englishmen of 
every degree. In that chapter, which I suppose is 
made from one or two letters published at the time, 
Mr. Smalley quotes " The Spectator," as saying 
that Englishmen, whether they knew Mr. Lowell or 
not, looked on him as a personal friend. 

Of all the various addresses which contributed, 
each in its place, to his reputation as a public 
speaker, that which I have alluded to, which was 
delivered at Birmingham, on " Democracy," is the 
most remarkable. It has, indeed, become a clas- 
sic. It deserves its reputation ; and it undoubtedly 
states with careful accuracy Lowell's foundation 
feeling as to the institutions of this country, and 
what may be expected if democracy is fairly under- 
stood and fairly applied. No one who was familiar 
with him or with his letters, or had really studied 



MINISTER TO ENGLAND 253 

his more serious poems, will regard any of the ut- 
terances in this great address as being new. They 
were the words of a careful scholar who was born 
under favorable circumstances in the midst of demo- 
cracy admirably well applied. His training was all 
the better because the original people of Massachu- 
setts are, so to speak, democratic in their origin and 
in the habit of their thought, without having formed 
many abstract theories on the subject, and being 
always, indeed, quite indifferent as to what the spec- 
ulative theory might be. 

An American minister abroad must not be often 
or long absent from his post. But there are methods 
by which four fortnights of permitted absence may 
be added together, and your outing taken at once. 
In some way Lowell was thus free for a tour 
through the Continent to Italy in the autumn of 
1881. In Italy he and Story and Mr. Richard 
Dana met. Dana was at the Wells School with 
him when they were little boys, and in Italy they 
had that most agreeable of companions, Mr. John 
W. Field. Dana died the next winter, and Lowell 
writes to Field, " The lesson for us is to close up " 
— " if a year or two older than I, he belonged more 
immediately to my own set, and I had known him 
life long." 

In the summer of 1882, returning from Spain to 
America, I spent a month in London. I told Lowell 
one day that I was one of the " round-the-world " 
correspondents of the Murray Dictionary, and that 
I wanted to call on Dr. Murray. He said he had 
been trying to do the same thing, and proposed to 



254 JAMES KUSSELL LOWELL 

take me, — an invitation which, of course, I ac- 
cepted. 

The reader ought to know that the Oxford Dic- 
tionary, now nearly half finished, was undertaken 
forty-one years ago, — as early as 1857. The first 
suggestion was made by Dean Trench, and, at the 
vote of the Philological Society, several hundred 
readers agreed to contribute notes made in their 
reading of English books, for the materials of such 
a dictionary. After twenty-one years some speci- 
men pages were prepared from the notes collected 
by such readers, and submitted by Dr. Murray to 
the Clarendon Press in Oxford. Dr. Murray is now 
known through the English-speaking world for his 
charge of this magnificent work, which, I think, 
men will always call " Murray's Dictionary." 

The directors of the Clarendon Press agreed to 
assume the immense cost and charge of publication, 
and in 1888 the first volume of the great series, now 
as far forward as H and I, appeared. The contribu- 
tors' names make a very valuable list of people inter- 
ested in good English. And the volumes thus far 
published are the treasury to which all other diction- 
ary-makers rush as their great storehouse of mate- 
rials. 

For the purpose of systematic cooperation, each 
reader was prepared with formal printed blanks. 
Each of these was to have, as far as his special read- 
ing showed, the history of one word. That word in 
large letters was the head of the completed blank. 
The reader is not necessarily an authority in lan- 
guage. He is a scout or truffle-dog who brings the 



MINISTER TO ENGLAND 255 

result of his explorations to the authorities for com- 
parison with other results. 

Mill Hill, where the dictionary was then — shall 
I say manufactured ? — is about ten miles, more or 
less, from the house which Lowell lived in. As 
we entered the cab which was to take us, he said 
that he should bid the cabby carry us through the 
back of the Park, a region which I had never seen. 
I have been amused since to see how many traveling 
Americans can say the same thing. Lowell evidently 
knew its turns and corners and bosks and deserts 
well. Ragged, barefoot boys were playing cricket 
in their improvised way with the most primitive of 
tools, such as they had constructed from the spoils 
of the streets. No policeman bade them leave the 
place, no sign intimated that they were to keep off 
the grass ; an admirable loafers' paradise for the 
real children of the public, such as there is not in 
our tidy Common in Boston, and such as I never 
saw in the Central Park of New York. It was 
pleasant to see how thoroughly at home Lowell was 
there. To such retreats in London he alludes again 
and again in his letters : " I have only to walk a 
hundred yards from my door to be in Hyde Park, 
where, and in Kensington Gardens, I can tread on 
green turf and hear the thrushes sing all winter. 
... As for the climate, it suits me better than any 
I have ever lived in." 

Spare a moment, dear reader, to find what greeted 
us at the Dictionary House. I doubt if they have 
yet invented any such name as Apotheka, or Power- 
house, or Granary. As why should they, seeing 



256 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

this is the only such house in the world ? A circu- 
lar house of corrugated iron, originally built for a 
church, I believe, perhaps fifty feet in diameter, 
perhaps twenty-five feet high, lighted from the top. 
It reminded me, at the instant, of the great read- 
ing-room of the British Museum, though not so 
large. Here was Dr. Murray, the distinguished 
director, at work with his staff of gentlemen and 
ladies. Of course he was delighted to see Lowell 
on the spot, and in the simplest and kindest way 
he showed us the method of the work. 

Every day's mail brought to this curious temple 
of language its new tribute to the history of the 
English tongue. The slips which I have tried to 
describe come from Cranberry Centre and Big Lick, 
from Edinburgh and from Hongkong. Once a 
month each of the thousand or more readers mails 
his budgets, so there would be every day a new par- 
cel to be assorted ; and we were ready for them at 
Mill Hill. Here were twenty or thirty thousand 
pamphlet-boxes into which these slips were at once 
sorted. The boxes were arranged in alphabetical 
order, beginning with that which held the slips of 
the title word A, and only ending, say, with box 
33,333, with the box of ZYX — if there be so 
convenient a word in the English language. 

All which I describe in this detail, because I 
should be glad if the reader will imagine the gay, 
bright, wise, and instructive talk which followed — 
oh, for an hour, perhaps hours — between Dr. Mur- 
ray, the first authority as to English words, and 
Lowell, the authority most to be relied on as to the 



MINISTER TO ENGLAND 257 

language of New England. It was not far from the 
time when Lowell told the Oxford gentlemen at a 
public dinner that they spoke English almost as well 
as their cousins in America. No, I do not remem- 
ber what were the words these gentlemen discussed. 
But each was as eager as the other. Was it " dod- 
dered " or " daddock " ? I do not know. " Miss 
Mary, will you have the goodness to bring us ' dod- 
der ' ? " And Miss Mary puts up a light ladder to 
her D shelf and returns with the pasteboard box 
which has five and twenty uses of "dodder" between 
the days of Wiclif and Besant, and the two scholars 
dissect and discuss. You would think that Lowell 
had never thought of anything else. And yet it is 
the same Lowell who in a quiet corner of Mrs. Leo 
Hunter's to-night will be discussing with Lord Gran- 
ville the amount and quality of the theology which 
the Great Powers shall permit in the secondary 
schools of Bulgaria ! 

I must not try to give any account in detail of 
the company of literary men and women whom Low- 
ell found in London. Two careful and interesting 
papers by Mr. Bowker, published in " Harper's " in 
1888 and 1889, are well worth the reader's atten- 
tion. From these papers I have made some lists of 
people, almost any one of whom you would be glad 
to have met, who worked their pens in London, or 
printed their books there, in those years. Mr. 
Bowker himself, as the English representative of 
" Harper's," was living there, and his personal notes 
of these people are valuable as they are entertaining. 
Of novelists alone he gives a list in which are these 
names : — 



258 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

Wilkie Collins, Kichard Doddridge Blackmore, 
Miss Braddon (Mrs. Maxwell), Dinah M. Craik, 
Thomas Hardy, Walter Besant, James Payn, David 
Christie Murray, Henry Rider Haggard, Robert 
Louis Stevenson, Clark Russell. 

Take those ten names only, and you say, as a lady 
once said to me, " Any one of them would make the 
fortune of a reception." But Mr. Bowker's next 
ten do not pale in comparison : — 

F. W. Robinson, George Macdonald, George 
Meredith, W. E. Norris, Mrs. Ritchie (Anne Thack- 
eray), Mrs. Oliphant, Amelia Blandford Edwards, 
Mrs. Elizabeth Lynn Linton, Miss Yonge, and Mrs. 
Macquoid. Observe, these twenty are only some of 
the novelists. 

Among other men and women of letters, there are 
Tennyson, Browning, Hughes, Bailey, both Morrises, 
Domett, Taylor, Mallock, Kinglake, our dear old 
Martin Tupper, Stephen, Walter H. Pater, Adding- 
ton Symonds, Swinburne, Buchanan, the Rossettis, 
Jean Ingelow, Owen Meredith, Matthew Arnold, 
Austin Dobson, Alfred Austin, Coventry Patmore, 
Gerald Massey, Max Miiller, Spencer, Tyndall and 
Huxley, Lubbock, and the two Cardinals, Manning 
and Newman. Other clergyman are Farrar, Haweis, 
and Spurgeon. Besides these, among men who have 
done more than write books, there are, in Mr. Bow- 
ker's lists, Froude, McCarthy, and Lecky to repre- 
sent history, and Dr. Smith, king of dictionaries. 
Smiles, the self-help man, Colvin, and Hamilton are 
others. 

I think I may say that Lowell knew personally all 




THOMAS HUGHES 



MINISTER TO ENGLAND 259 

the more distinguished of the persons in these very 
interesting groups before he left London. He 
formed some very tender friendships among them, 
and in the collection of his letters none are more 
affectionate, none are more entertaining, than are 
those to his English friends. Besides those named 
in the lists above there are ladies, — Mrs. Stephen, 
the Misses Lawrence, Mrs. Clifford; and Gordon, 
Du Maurier, Lord Dufferin, are mentioned as people 
with whom he was in pleasant relations. Lady 
Lyttelton was a most intimate friend of Mr. and 
Mrs. Lowell. 

Among other intimate friends, Judge Hughes and 
Mrs. Hughes. Dr. Hughes, as every one knows, had 
been a guest at Elmwood, and Mr. Lowell during 
his residence as our minister in England, and in 
his visits there afterwards, would have thought a 
summer wasted indeed if he had not received the 
welcome of these dear friends. 

With the election of Mr. Cleveland in the autumn 
of 1884 Lowell knew that his stay in England would 
come to a close. For ten or fifteen years, indeed, 
he had been in public antagonism to Mr. Blaine, and 
he would never have served under him as President 
in the English legation. More than this, however, 
Mrs. Lowell died in the spring of 1885, unex- 
pectedly, of course, for death is always unexpected. 
"We had taken it for granted together that she 
would outlive me, and that would have been best." 
How many a man and woman have had to say some- 
thing like that ! 

She had been an invalid, with critical ups and 



260 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

downs. But her unfailing sympathy for him and 
his work had never yielded, and those who remember 
him in the closest intimacies of London life always 
speak of her with tenderness. She was almost 
always shut up at home, and he was everywhere, 
among people of all sorts and conditions. But the 
very difference of their lives when they were parted 
seemed to make their companionship more tender 
when they were at home. 

Of his departure from England, his cousin, Mr. 
Abbott Lawrence Lowell, says, with truth : — 

" But his usefulness as a minister far transcended 
the import of any specific questions that arose. It 
was his personal presence there, winning the respect 
and admiration of the English for all that is best in 
America, that was most valuable. Among the many 
surprises in Mr. Lowell's life none is perhaps greater 
than that, after writing so bitterly about Mason and 
Slidell, he should have been instrumental in soothing 
the irritation between England and America that 
arose out of the civil war ; but such is the case, and 
it is not too much to say that he did more than any 
one else towards removing the prejudice which the 
upper classes in England had for the United States." 
And Mr. Smalley at the time wrote from London : — 

" The announcement of Mr. Lowell's recall gives 
rise to many expressions of regret and good will 
besides those which appear in the newspapers. Nor 
is the expression of good will a new thing. His 
writings, his speeches, and his public services had 
brought him so close to all English-speaking people 
that their feeling toward him was one of affection ; 



MINISTER TO ENGLAND 261 

in short, there were ninety millions who would rejoice 
in any good fortune that befell him, and sympa- 
thize with him in trouble. The solicitude to know 
whether he was to remain minister has been general. 
' Will President Cleveland keep Mr. Lowell in Lon- 
don ? * is the question which every American in 
London has been asked over and over again since 
last November ; perhaps twice a day on an average. 
And when the inquiring Briton was told that Mr. 
Lowell would have to go, the next question gen- 
erally was, ' What, then, did the President mean by 
Civil Service Eef orm ? ' " 
What indeed? 



CHAPTER XV 

HOME AGAIN 

Lowell landed in America again in June, 1885. 
It was nearly seven years since he left us on his 
way to Spain. And these were seven years which 
had changed, in a thousand regards, the conditions 
of his old American home. 

In August, 1891, he died, seventy-two years old, — 
six years after this return. Of these years we have 
in his letters a record of pathetic interest, and every 
one who knew him and who loved him will say that 
of the seven decades of lif e — to which more than 
once he alludes — he never seemed more cheerful 
and companionable and cordial and wise than in the 
seventh. " And young," he would often have said 
himself. He discusses old age and its coming in his 
letters to near friends, — yet perhaps more than is 
wise, certainly more than is necessary. But once 
and again he tells his correspondent that he is as 
young as a boy. He signs himself, in writing to 
Gilder, " Giacopo il Rigiovinato." And he writes 
out: — 

From the Universal Eavesdropper : 
Anecdote of James Russell Lowell. 

Passing along the Edgeware Road with a friend 
two years ago, their eyes were attracted by a sign 



HOME AGAIN 263 

with this inscription, " Hospital for Incurable Chil- 
dren." Turning to his companion, with that genial 
smile for which he is remarkable, Lowell said quietly, 
" There's where they '11 send me one of these days." 

But, all the same, seven years of Europe had 
changed Elmwood and Cambridge and Harvard Col- 
lege and New England and America and the world. 
In a way, of course, Lowell knew this as well as 
any man. He knew it better than most men knew 
it. And there were a good many sad things in 
his arrival, as there must be after seven years. So 
many deaths of old friends ! So many changes in 
the daily life of the people around him ! And he, 
almost without a vocation ; obliged to establish his 
new avocations ! 

Some years before this, Mr. Lothrop Motley, in 
all the triumph of his well-earned success after the 
publication of his first volumes of history, came back 
to his old home — shall I say for a holiday ? I do 
not know but that he meant to reside here. Not 
many months after he arrived, however, he told me, 
to my surprise, that he was going back to Europe. 
He was going to work in Holland on the archives 
again; to continue his great historical enterprise. I 
need not say that I expressed my regret that he was 
to leave us so soon. But he replied, almost sadly, 
that there was no place here in Boston for a man 
who was not at work : " You ought to hang out a 
long pendant from one of the forts in the harbor to 
the other, and write on it, i No admittance except on 
business.' " This was fatally true then of Boston ; 
it is near the truth now. 



264 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

And Lowell was no longer a diplomatist ; nor had 
he any special abuses to reform ; he had no regu- 
lar lectures to deliver ; he had no wife with whom 
to talk and read and make dinner linger long, and 
breakfast and lunch. He was in a changed world, 
and for that world had to prepare himself. 

Perhaps it is as well to say that Boston also was 
changed; the Boston of 1885 was not the Boston 
of 1838. The late Mr. Amos Adams Lawrence said 
to me, not long before his death, that his father 
used to say that in the beginning of the century 
Boston was governed by the great national mer- 
chants : such men as " Billy Gray," one of whose 
ships discovered the Columbia River ; or as Colonel 
Perkins, who handled the trade of the East in the 
spirit in which a great artist composes a great 
picture ; or as William Tudor, who supplied ice to 
the tropics, and when a winter failed him in New 
England, sent his schooners up into Baffin's Bay to 
cut ice from the icebergs. 

Mr. Lawrence said that when this sort of men 
gave up the government of Boston, it fell into the 
hands of the great mechanics: such men as de- 
veloped the quarries at Quincy ; as built Bunker 
Hill Monument, and in later days have built the 
Mechanics' Hall, have united Boston with San 
Francisco and all the Pacific coast by rail. And 
then, he said, the government of Boston passed into 
the hands which hold it now, — into the hands of 
the distillers and brewers and retailers of liquor. 

So far as the incident or accident of administra- 
tion goes, this bitter satire is true ; and it expresses 



HOME AGAIN 265 

one detail of the change between the Boston of the 
middle of this century and the Boston to which 
Lowell returned in June of 1885. Now, such a 
change affects social order ; it affects conversation ; 
in spite of you, it affects literature. Thus it affects 
philanthropy. The Boston of 1840 really believed 
that a visible City of God could be established here 
by the forces which it had at command. It was 
very hard in 1885 to make the Boston of that year 
believe any such thing. 

But Lowell was no pessimist. He was proud of 
his home, and I think you would not have caught 
him in expressing in public any such contrast as 
I have ventured upon in these lines. On the other 
hand, the letters which Mr. Norton has published in 
his charming volume confirm entirely the impression 
which Lowell's old friends received from him : that 
he was glad, so glad, to be at home; that he had 
much to do in picking up his dropped stitches ; and 
that he liked nothing better than to renew the old 
associations. It was, so to speak, unfortunate that 
he could not at once return to Elmwood. In fact, 
he did not establish himself there for three years. 
But, on the other hand, at Southborough, five-and- 
twenty miles from Boston, where he lived at the 
home of Mrs. Burnett, his daughter, he had a 
beautiful country around him, and, what was always 
a pleasure to him, the exploration of new scenery. 

I asked a near friend of his if Lowell were the 
least bit wilted after his return. " Wilted ? I should 
say not a bit. Bored ? yes ; worried, a little. But," 
he added, as I should do myself, " the last talk I 



266 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

had with him, or rather listened to, I shall never 
forget." 

He spent the winter of 1889 in Boston with his 
dear sister, Mrs. Putnam, from whose recollections 
I was able to give the charming account which he 
furnished to us of his childhood for the first pages 
of this series. We have lost her from this world 
since those pages were first printed. And he was, 
of course, near his old friends and kindred : Dr. 
Holmes, John Holmes, all the Saturday Club, Dr. 
Howe, Charles Norton, — his intimate and tender 
friendship with whom was one of the great blessings 
of his life. These were all around him. But there 
was no Longfellow, no Appleton, no Emerson, no 
Agassiz, no Dana, no Page ; Story was in Europe. 

For occupation, he had just as many opportunities 
for public speaking as he chose to use. He had to 
prepare for the press the uniform edition of his 
works, both in prose and in poetry. It seems to me 
that he was too fastidious and rigid in this work. 
I think he left out a good deal which ought to have 
been preserved there. And this makes it certain 
that the little side-scraps which the newspapers pre- 
served, or such as linger in some else forgotten 
magazine, will be regarded as among the treasures 
of collectors. More than that, many a boy and 
many a girl will owe to some such scraps inspira- 
tions which will last them through life. He occa- 
sionally published a poem, and occasionally delivered 
an address or lecture. But he took better care of 
himself than in the old days. There was no such 
crisis before the country as had engaged him then ; 




WILLIAM PAGE 



HOME AGAIN 267 

and, in a way, it may be said that he enjoyed the 
literary leisure which he deserved. 

He was, alas! at many periods during these six 
years a very sad sufferer from sickness. There is 
something very pathetic in the manly way in which 
he alludes to such suffering. From no indulgence 
of his own, he was a victim of hereditary gout; and 
you find in the letters allusions to attacks which 
kept him in agony, which sometimes lasted for six 
weeks in succession. Then the attack would end 
instantly ; and Lowell would write in the strain 
which has been referred to, as if he were a boy 
again, skating on Fresh Pond or tracing up Beaver 
Brook to its sources. 

Simply, he would not annoy his friends by talking 
about his pains. If he could cheer them up by 
writing of his recovery, he would do so. 

I remember that on the first visit I made him 
after he was reestablished at Elmwood, when I con- 
gratulated him because he was at home again, he 
said, with a smile still, " Yes, it is very nice to be 
here; but the old house is full of ghosts." Of 
course it was. His father and mother were no 
longer living; Mrs. Burnett, who was with him 
there, was the only one of his children who had sur- 
vived ; and the circle of his brothers and sisters had 
been sadly diminished. He and his brother, Robert 
Lowell, died in the same year. Still, he was here 
with his own books ; he had the old college library 
under his lee, and he had old friends close at hand. 
Once or twice in his letters of those days he goes 
into some review of his own literary endeavor. Cer- 



268 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

tainly he had reason to be proud of it. Certainly he 
was not too proud ; and I think he did have a feel- 
ing of satisfaction that his neighbors and his country 
appreciated the motive with which he had worked 
and the real success which he had attained. 

As the great address at Birmingham sums up 
conveniently the political principles which governed 
his life, whether in literature or in diplomacy, so 
the address at the quarter-millennium celebration of 
Harvard College at Cambridge may be said to pre- 
sent a summary of such theories as he had formed 
on education, and of his hopes and his fears for the 
future of education. There are two or three apho- 
risms there which I think will be apt to be quoted 
fifty years hence, perhaps, as they are not quoted 
to-day. In the midst of a hundred or more of gen- 
tlemen who had served with him in the college he had 
the courage to say, " Harvard has as yet developed 
no great educator ; for we imported Agassiz." 

On the 30th of April, 1889, there was a mag- 
nificent festival in the city of New York, at which 
he spoke. It is already forgotten by the people of 
that city and of the country, but at the moment it 
engaged universal attention. It was the celebration 
of the centennial of the establishment of the United 
States as a nation ; the centennial of the birth of the 
Constitution ; of the inauguration of Washington. 
It was, of course, the fit occasion for the expression 
of the people's gratitude for the blessings which 
have followed on the establishment of the federal 
Constitution. 

For this celebration the most admirable arrange- 



HOME AGAIN 269 

ments were made in New York by the committee 
which had taken the matter in hand. In the even- 
ing a banquet was served at the Metropolitan Opera- 
House, and many of the most distinguished speakers 
in the country had gladly accepted the invitation to 
be present. Among them Lowell naturally was one. 
But to those who listened, it seemed as if all these 
great men were in a sort awed by the greatness of 
the occasion. His address, perhaps because so care- 
fully prepared, was for the purpose no better than 
any of the others. They could not help it. Every 
man who spoke was asking himself how his speech 
would read in the year 1989. There was no spon- 
taneity ; instead of it there was decorum and con- 
sideration, the determination to think wisely, and 
none of the eloquence which " belongs to the man 
and the occasion." For hour after hour the patient 
stream of considerate commonplace flowed on, till 
at two in the morning the new President of the /3 ^H*A< 
United States made the closing speech. The ex- 
pectation of this address, and that alone, had held 
the great audience together. He was probably the 
only man who had not had a chance " to make any 
preparation." He had gone through the day alive 
with the feeling of the day, drinking in its inspira- 
tions ; and with such preparation as six hours at the 
dinner-table would give him, he rose to say what 
the day had taught him. He made one of the most 
magnificent addresses to which I have ever listened. 
He led with him from height to height an audience 
jaded and tired by the dignity of lawyers, the dex- 
terity of politicians, and the commonplace of schol- 



270 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

ars. In fifteen minutes lie had established his own 
reputation as a great public orator among the thou- 
sand men who were fortunate enough to hear him. 

And yet, such is the satire of what we call his- 
tory that, because the other speeches had been writ- 
ten out and could be sent to the journals, — because 
even a New York morning newspaper has to go to 
press at some time, — this absolutely extemporaneous 
speech of the one man who proved himself equal to 
the occasion did not get itself reported in any ade- 
quate form, and will never go down into history. 
There is, however, no danger that any of the other 
addresses of that great ceremonial will be read at 
the end of the hundred years. 

His cousin says that Mr. Lowell was chiefly occu- 
pied by his addresses and other prose essays in the 
first years after his return, but that he wrote a 
few poems. Most of these will be found in the 
" Atlantic." For the Lowell Institute he prepared 
a course of lectures on the old English dramatists, 
which have been published since his death. Of his 
addresses he printed but few, but the address on 
" The Independent in Politics," which he delivered 
in 1888 before the New York Reform Club, was 
printed by that club. 

Of his Cambridge life after his return to Elm- 
wood his cousin writes : " The house was haunted 
by sad memories, but at least he was once more 
among his books. The library, which filled the 
two rooms on the ground floor to the left of the 
front door, had been constantly growing, and during 
his stay in Europe he had bought rare works with 



HOME AGAIN 271 

the intention of leaving them to Harvard College. 
Here he would sit when sad or unwell and read Cal- 
deron, the ' Nightingale in the Study,' in whom he 
always found a solace. Except for occasional at- 
tacks of the gout, his life had been singularly free 
from sickness, but he had been at home only a few 
months when he was taken ill, and, after the strug- 
gle of a strong man to keep up as long as possible, 
he was forced to go to bed. In a few days his con- 
dition became so serious that the physicians feared 
he would not live; but he rallied, and, although 
too weak to go to England, as he had planned, he 
appeared to be comparatively well. When taken 
sick, he had been preparing a new edition of his 
works, the only full collection that had ever been 
made, and he had the satisfaction of publishing it 
soon after his recovery. This was the last literary 
work he was destined to do, and it rounded off fitly 
his career as a man of letters." 

Of these six years perhaps his friends remember 
his conversation most. Like other great men and 
good men, he did not insist on choosing the subject 
for conversation himself, but adapted himself to the 
wishes and notions of the people around him. His 
memory was so absolute, his fancy was so free, and 
his experience so wide that he seemed as much at 
home in one subject as in another. But when he 
had quite his own way among a circle of people 
more or less interested in books or literature, the 
talk was quite sure to drift round into some discus- 
sion of etymologies, of dialect, or of the change of 
habit which comes in as one or two centuries go by. 



272 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

And when his curiosity was once excited about a 
word — as I said when I was speaking of his talk 
with Mr. Murray — he would hold on to that word 
as a genealogist holds on to the biography of a great- 
grandmother of whom he only knows half the name. 
Here are one or two passages from notes which illus- 
trate what I mean : " I used to know some about 
Pennsylvania Dutch, but forget their names." " I 
wish I could have studied the Western lingo more, 
for it has colored our national speech most." " I 
think perhaps W. P. Garrison might put you on the 
track of something about the Southern patois." 

" Pitch into the abuse of ' will ' and c shall/ 
6 would ' and ' should ; ' when we were boys, no 
New Englander was capable of confounding them. 
I am expecting a statute saying that a murderer 
6 will be hanged by the neck till he is dead.' Alas 
the day ! " And again, " Daddock I knew, but 
never met it alive ; dodder, for a tree whose wood 
is beginning to grow pulpy with decay, I have heard, 
and the two words may be cousins. The latter, 
however, I believe to be a modern importation." 
Murray and the dictionaries confirm his quick guess 
between the relation of one of these words to the 
other. 

We have a fine American proverb, " Get the 
best." In later years I have tried to make some 
Western State adopt it for its state seal. I have 
never seen it in any earlier use than in one of Low- 
ell's pleasant letters describing a canoe voyage in 
Maine ; and I wrote to him rather late in his life 
to ask him if he were the inventor of the phrase. 



HOME AGAIN 273 

It has been adopted, as the reader may be apt to 
remember, by the authors of Webster's Dictionary, 
and is a sort of trade-mark to their useful vol- 
umes. I am sorry to say that Lowell himself did 
not remember whether he had picked it up in 
conversation, or whether he coined it in its present 
form. For myself, I like to associate it with him. 

I find, as I said, I am always reading with plea- 
sure his estimate of his own work in the close of his 
life. It seems to me to be free from mock modesty 
on the one hand, as it is from vanity on the other. 
He seems to me to be as indifferent about style as 
I think a man ought to be. If a man knows he 
is well dressed, he had better not recall his last 
conversation with his tailor ; he had better go and 
come and do his duty. Other people may say about 
the dress what they choose. In Lowell's self-criti- 
cism, if one may call it so, you see the same frank- 
ness and unconsciousness, the same freedom from 
conceit of any kind, which you see in those early 
expressions which have been cited as illustrations 
of his boyhood and his youth. If he had said what 
he wanted to, he knew he had. If he had failed, he 
knew that. But it seemed to him almost of course 
that if a man knew what he wanted to say he should 
be able to say it. 

One wishes that this unconsciousness of method 
could work itself into the minds of literary men 
more often and more thoroughly. Let a man eat 
his dinner and let him enjoy it, but do not let the 
guests discuss the difference between the taste of 
red pepper and of black pepper. It is as true in 



274: JAMES KUSSELL LOWELL 

literature as everywhere else that the life is more 
than meat, and the body than raiment. There will 
probably be sophists and critics and fencing-mas- 
ters and dancing-masters in all phases of society. 
They will certainly give much pleasure to each 
other, and perhaps they will give pleasure to the 
world ; but it may be doubted whether they will be 
of much use to anybody. I suppose Grant enjVyed 
a dress parade when he saw it well done, but when 
they asked Grant how long it took to make a light 
infantryman, he said, " About half an hour." Let 
us remember this as we listen, a little bored, to what 
people have to tell us about style. 

There are some curious discussions as to the 
places and the duties of prose and of poetry ; what 
you had better say in prose, what you had better 
say in verse. But I am disposed to think that such 
discussions with him were merely matters of amuse- 
ment or possible speculation. Everybody who is 
really familiar with Lowell's writing will remember 
many passages where the prose may be said to be 
the translation of his own poetry, or the poetry to 
be the translation of his own prose. And with such 
training as his, with such absolute command of lan- 
guage, with his accurate ear and perfect sense of 
rhythm, it would be of course that he should " lisp 
in numbers, for the numbers came." 

To the very end of his life, his conversation, and 
his daily walk indeed, were swayed by the extreme 
tenderness for the feelings of others which his sister 
noticed when he was a little boy. He would not 
give pain if he could help it. He would go so much 



ELMWOOD, 
CAMBRIDGE, MASS. 



//? A^j. /<?f„ 



/ 

4>U tubs*- ? ' Ay a*****^ jl^, / 4 £ </ * 




^Jb-AU. 



MR. LOWELL TO DR. HALE 



HOME AGAIN 275 

more than halfway in trying to help the person who 
was next him that he would permit himself to be 
bored, really without knowing that he was bored. 
He would overestimate, as good men and great men 
will, the abilities of those with whom he had to do. 
So his geese were sometimes swans, as Mr. Emer- 
son's were, and those of other lovers of mankind. 

His letters are never more interesting than in 
these closing years ; and, as I have suggested, the 
fun of his conversation sparkled as brightly and 
happily as it ever did. Mr. Smalley, in an amusing 
passage, has described his ultra-Americanism in 
England. A pretty Englishwoman said, " Mr. 
Hawthorne has insulted us all by saying that all 
English women are fat ; but while Mr. Lowell is 
in the room I do not dare say that all American 
women are lean." When Lowell came home he 
would take pleasure in snubbing the Anglomaniacs 
who are sometimes found in New England, who 
want to show by their pronunciation or the choice 
of their words that they have crossed the ocean. I 
think that every one who is still living, of the little 
dinner-party where he tortured one of these younger 
men, will remember the fun of his attacks. This 
was one of the men whom you run against every 
now and then, who thought he must say " Brum- 
magem" because Englishmen said so a hundred 
years ago ; and on this occasion he was taking pains 
to pronounce the word a clerk " as if it rhymed 
with " lark," — " as she is spoken in England, you 
know ! " Lowell just pounced upon him as an 
eagle might pounce on a lark, to ask why he did so, 



276 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

why, if it were our fashion to pronounce the word 
" as she is spelled," we might not do so, whether on 
the whole this were not the old pronunciation, and 
so on, and so on. 

Never was anything more absurd than the idea 
which the Irish sympathizers took up, that a resi- 
dence in London had spoiled his fondness for the 
old idioms and the other old home ways. Indeed, I 
think his stay in Southborough was specially plea- 
sant to him because he learned in another part of 
Middlesex County how to renew some of those 
studies of "Early America" which he had begun 
before he knew in Cambridge. 

As one turns over the volume of his letters, he 
finds traces of the fancies which shot themselves in 
a wayward fashion into his conversation. One of 
the fads of his later life was the taking up of the 
notion which we generally refer to Lord Beacons- 
field, that almost everything remarkable in modern 
life may be traced back, later or earlier, to a Hebrew 
origin. He would discourse at length on the 
Hebrew traits in Browning, and he affected to have 
discovered the line of genealogy where, a century 
or two ago, a streak of the blood of Abraham came 
into the lines of the Brownings. He was quite sure 
— I am sorry to say I have forgotten how ■ — that he 
had a line of Jewish blood himself, a line which he 
could trace out somewhere this side of the times of 
Ivanhoe. Then there was the hereditary descent of 
his mother's family from the Hebrides, which has 
been referred to. The Spences were of Traill ori- 
gin, — his brother Robert carried the Traill name. 



HOME AGAIN 277 

And Lowell liked to think that he had in his make-up 
something of the element which in a Lochiel you 
would call second-sight. Sometimes he alludes to 
that in his letters ; he has only to shut his eyes, he 
says, and he can see all the people whom he has 
known, whom he wants to see, and carry on his con- 
versation with them. I have already said that when 
I painfully worked through the poems of James 
Kussell, our James Russell's great-grandfather, ren- 
dering that homage to the shade of that poet which 
no one else has rendered for a hundred years, I had 
to remind myself that he, alas ! had no second-sight, 
and that he differed from his great-grandson pre- 
cisely in this, that he was not of Noma's blood and 
could not work Noma's miracles. 

One of the men of letters whose impressions of 
such a life every one is glad to read writes to me of 
Lowell's work : " Mr. Lowell excelled at once in ori- 
ginal and critical work, thus giving the lie to the 
sneer that a critic is a person who has failed as a 
creator. Both as a poet and an essayist he revealed 
himself as a genuine cosmopolitan. He had the wis- 
dom of the scholar and the horse sense of the man 
of the world. He was equally at home in the splen- 
did realm of the imagination and in the prosaic 
domain of hard facts ; and it may be said of him, 
as Macaulay said of Bunyan, that he gave to the 
abstract the interest of the concrete. As a satirist 
and humorist he produced in the 'Biglow Papers' a 
work which is unique in our literature. He was not 
given to moralizing ; his was as far as possible from 
being a dull didactic brain ; but all to which he put 



278 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

his pen was wholesome and in the best sense stimu- 
lating, free from morbidness and that pessimism of 

1 John P. 
Robinson, he ' 

who declared that 

* They did n't know everythin' down in Judee.' " 

In one of Lowell's letters written to England after 
his return he says that in America they had invented 
a new torture while he was away, in the shape of 
calling upon authors to read their own works aloud 
for the benefit of charities. I am always grateful 
to this form of torture when it brings as agreeable 
compensation as I remember on an occasion when 
we were both reading, I think, for the pleasure of an 
audience which had contributed to the purchase of 
the Longfellow Park at Cambridge. For this gave 
me the pleasure of talking to Lowell for the two 
hours while the "entertainment" lasted, as we sat 
upon the stage in the Boston Museum. It is rather 
a curious thing, to a person as little used to a stage 
as I am, to find how wholly the footlights separate 
you, not simply from the personal touch of the peo- 
ple in the audience, but from them, until it comes 
to be your turn to address them. Even at a public 
dinner, when you sit by some agreeable person, you 
have not exactly the chance for conversation with 
him which you have when both of you are in mediae- 
val chairs dug out from the property-room, and read- 
ing is going on quite in front of you which you may 
attend to or not, as you both choose. Of course the 
fortune of a charity was made, if Lowell were willing 
to read poetry or prose which he had written. 



HOME AGAIN 279 

As the reader remembers, he lectured again in 
Boston in one or two full courses to large audiences 
at the Lowell Institute. He did not absolutely re- 
fuse calls from distant cities, but I think traveling 
became somewhat a burden to him, and after he was 
once in Elmwood, the associations of the old books 
and the old life were so pleasant that it was more 
difficult to draw him away from home. 

For his summer holiday, however, he could run 
across the ocean and visit his English friends in 
the country, or go back to his pleasant Whitby 
surroundings. Whitby had for him a particular 
charm, and one really wishes that he had been in 
the mood at some time to make a monograph on 
Whitby, so interesting are some of the references 
which he makes to it in his letters. 

" I am really at Whitby, whither I have been 
every summer but 1885 for the last six years. This 
will tell you how much I like it. A very primitive 
place it is, and the manners and ways of its people 
much like those of New England. The people with 
whom I lodge, but for accent, might be of Ashfield. 
It is a wonderfully picturesque place, with the 
bleaching bones of its Abbey standing aloof on 
the bluff and dominating the country for leagues. 
Once, they say, the monks were lords as far as they 
could see. The skeleton of the Abbey still lords it 
over the landscape, which was certainly one of the 
richest possessions they had, for there never was 
finer. Sea and moor, hill and dale ; sea dotted with 
purple sails and white (fancy mixes a little in the 
purple, perhaps) ; moors flushed with heather in 



280 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

blossom, and fields yellow with corn, and the dark 
heaps of trees in every valley blabbing the secret of 
the stream that fain would hide to escape being the 
drudge of man." 

We shall find this "hiding of the stream" again. 
" I know not why wind has replaced water for grind- 
ing ; and the huge water-wheels green with moss and 
motionless give one a sense of repose after toil that 
to a lazy man like me is full of comfort." "I wish 
you could see the ' yards/ steep flights of stone steps 
hurrying down from the west cliff and the east, 
between which the river whose name I can never 
remember crawls into the sea." The river appears 
to have been the Esk River, which Lochinvar swam 
where there was no ford. 

A year afterwards Lowell writes from Whitby: 
"I am rather lame to-day, because I walked too 
much and over very rough paths yesterday. But 
how could I help it? For I will not give in to old 
age. The clouds were hanging ominously in the 
northwest, and soon it began to rain in a haphazard 
kind of way, as a musician who lodges over one lets 
his fingers idle among the keys before he settles 
down to the serious business of torture. So it went 
on drowsily, but with telling effects of damp, till we 
reached Falling Foss, which we saw as a sketch in 
water-colors, and which was very pretty. 

"Thunderstorms loitered about over the valley 
like 'Arries on a Bank Holiday, at a loss what to do 
with their leisure, but ducking us now and then by 
way of showing their good humor. However, there 
were parentheses of sunshine, and on the whole it 
was very beautiful." 



HOME AGAIN 281 

Again, the next year, in 1889, he says : " I was 
received with enthusiasm by the Misses Galilee, the 
landladies ; they vow they will never let my rooms 
so long as there is any chance of my coming. I 
like it as much as ever. I never weary of the view 
from my window ; the Abbey says to me, c The best 
of us get a little shaky at last, and there get to be 
gaps in our walls.' And then the churchyard adds, 
' But you have no notion what good beds there are 
at my inn — .' The mill runs no longer, but the 
stream does, down through a leafy gorge in little 
cascades and swirls and quiet pools with skyscapes 
in them, and seems happy in its holiday." We shall 
come to this "happy holiday" again. Will the 
reader observe that it is of a series of summers 
spent in this charming retirement at Whitby, that 
we hear people speak who talk of his summers in 
England as if the grand society he had met there 
had spoiled him for America. 

One cannot read Lowell for five minutes without 
seeing how large his life was, and how little he was 
fettered by the commonplace gyves of space or time 
or flesh or sense. He never preaches as Dr. Young 
would do, or Mr. Tupper, or Satan Montgomery. 
But, all the same, he is living in the larger life, and 
so are you if he calls you into his company. Writ- 
ing to Miss Norton, he says : — 

"I don't care where the notion of immortality 
came from. ... It is there, and I mean to hold 
it fast. Suppose we don't know. How much do 
we know, after all ? . . . The last time I was ill, I 
lost all consciousness of my flesh. I was dispersed 



282 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

through space in some inconceivable fashion and 
mixed with the Milky Way. . . . Yet the very fact 
that I had a confused consciousness all the while of 
the Milky Way as something to be mingled with, 
proved that I was there as much an individual as 
ever. 

" There is something in the flesh that is superior 
to the flesh, something that can in finer moments 
abolish matter and pain. And it is to this we must 
cling. . . . 

" . . .1 think the evolutionists will have to make 
a fetich of their protoplasm before long. Such a 
mush seems to me a poor substitute for the rock of 
ages, by which I understand a certain set of higher 
instincts which mankind have found solid under all 
weathers." 

If I am writing for those who have read Lowell 
carefully and loyally, they know that he knew that 
" the human race is the individual of which differ- 
ent men and women are separate cells or organs." 
They know that he knew that " honor, truth, and 
justice are not provincialisms of this little world," 
but belong to the life and language of the universe. 
They know that he knew that he belonged to the 
universe and was the infinite child of the infinite 
God. He says sometimes in joke that he hates to 
go to church. I am afraid that most men who could 
preach as well as he would say the same thing with 
the chances of the ordinary religious service. But 
he also says, " If Dr. Donne or Jeremy Taylor, or 
even Dr. South, were the preacher, perhaps " — 

As it happens, I recollect no expressions of his 



HOME AGAIN 283 

more enthusiastic than those in which he described 
public services of religion. His mother had be- 
longed to the Church of England, and his love for 
the Prayer Book was associated with his earliest 
recollections of her. 

For the rest, I am sure I should be most sorry 
to have any one think that a man of his large, reli- 
gious nature, who lived in the eternities, could be 
satisfied with the average ecclesiastical function of 
to-day. 

It was a disappointment to him that his health 
forbade one more visit to his dear Whitby, which he 
had proposed for the summer of 1890. On the last 
day of his last visit there, as I suppose, he wrote the 
beautiful poem, not so well known as it should be, 
with which I will close this series of reminiscences. 
He wrote it happily, and he liked it. 

It begins with a gay description of the flow and 
joyous dash of young life. As time passes on, the 
lively brook is held back by dams sometimes ; it is 
set to work to feed mankind, or to help men some- 
how; it is pent in and almost prisoned. But not 
for always. Why should not his brook burst its 
bonds and leap and plash and sparkle as happily as 
when it was born ? 

I print this poem because the circumstances of its 
composition and publication prevented its insertion 
in what are generally spoken of as the complete edi- 
tions edited by himself. He says to his daughter, 
in speaking of it, "A poem got itself written at 
Whitby which seems to be not altogether bad ; and 
this intense activity of the brain has the same effect 



284 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

as exercise on my body, and somehow braces up the 
whole machine." It is a pleasure to feel that he 
read this beautiful poem himself with something of 
the satisfaction which every one will find in it. And 
it is impossible that it should not suggest the condi- 
tions of his own closing life. " My Brook/' he calls 
it. And one need not run back to the memories of 
" Beaver Brook " to fancy the walk or the ride in 
which some mountain brook in the North Biding re- 
newed the old Cambridge experiences. The charm- 
ing brook of his youth, gay and joyous, had passed 
through one and another channel of hard work and 
of close discipline; but, as he says, there was no 
reason why, as he and his brook came nearer to the 
ocean, there should not be the same joy and free- 
dom that there was when he and his brook began 
on life. 

Just after he had written this charming poem — 
better than that, just when he liked it — it happened 
that he received an earnest request from that excel- 
lent friend of literature, Mr. Robert Bonner, asking 
him to send something which he might print. On 
the impulse of the moment Lowell sent this poem. 
Mr. Bonner kept it for illustration. He illustrated 
it beautifully, and it appeared before the world fif- 
teen months after, at Christmas of the year 1890, in 
the New York " Ledger." By the courtesy of Mr. 
Bonner's sons, I am able to print it all — as the fit 
close of these papers. I could not otherwise have 
given so charming a review by the poet of his own 
life and his eternal hopes. 



fc s 



H 5 














mffi 



{ 1 Y 



I! 







HOME AGAIN 285 



MY BROOK. 1 

It was far up the valley we first plighted troth, 
When the hours were so many, the duties so few ; 

Earth's burthen weighs wearily now on us both — 
But I 've not forgotten those dear days ; have you ? 

Each was first-born of Eden, a morn without mate, 
And the bees and the birds and the butterflies thought 

'T was the one perfect day ever fashioned by fate, 
Nor dreamed the sweet wonder for us two was wrought. 

I loitered beside you the whole summer long, 

I gave you a life from the waste-flow of mine ; 
And whether you babbled or crooned me a song, 

I listened and looked till my pulses ran wine. 

'T was but shutting my eyes ; I could see, I could hear, 

How you danced there, my nautch-girl, 'mid flag-root and fern, 

While the flashing tomauns tinkled joyous and clear 
On the slim wrists and ankles that flashed in their turn. 



Ah, that was so long ago ! Ages it seems, 

And, now I return sad with life and its lore, 
Will they flee my gray presence, the light-footed dreams, 
And Will-o'-Wisp light me his lantern no more ? 

Where the bee's hum seemed noisy once, all was so still, 
And the hermit-thrush nested secure of her lease, 

Now whirr the world's millstones and clacks the world's mill 
No fairy-gold passes, the oracles cease ! 

The life that I dreamed of was never to be, 
For I with my tribe into bondage was sold ; 

And the sungleams and moongleams, your elf-gifts to me, 
The miller transmutes into work-a-day gold. 



What you mint for the miller will soon melt away ; 
It is earthy, and earthy good only it buys, 

1 Copyright, 1890, by Robert Bonner's Sons. 



286 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

But the shekels you tost me are safe from decay ; 

They were coined of the sun and the moment that flies. 

Break loose from your thralldom ! 'T is only a leap ; 

Your eyes 't is but shutting, just holding your breath ; 
Escape to the old days, the days that will keep. 

If there 's peace in the mill-pond, so is there in death. 

Leap down to me, down to me ! Be, as you were, 
My nautch-girl, my singer ; again let them glance, 

Your tomauns, the sun's largess, that wink and are there, 
And gone again, still keeping time as you dance. 

Make haste, or it may be I wander again ; 

It is I, dear, that call you ; Youth beckons with me ; 
Come back to us both, for, in breaking your chain, 

You set the old summers and fantasies free. 

You are mine and no other's ; with life of my life 
I made you a Naiad, that were but a stream ; 

In the moon are brave dreams yet, and chances are rife 
For the passion that ventures its all on a dream. 



Leapt bravely ! Now down through the meadows we '11 go 
To the Land of Lost Days, whither all the birds wing, 

Where the dials move backward and asphodels blow ; 
Come flash your tomauns again, dance again, sing ! 

Yes, flash them and clash them on ankle and wrist, 

For we 're pilgrims to Dreamland, O Daughter of Dream ! 

There we find again all that we wasted or misst, 

And Fancy — poor fool ! — with her bauble 's supreme. 

As the Moors in their exile the keys treasured still 
Of their castles in Spain, so have I ; and no fear 

But the doors will fly open, whenever we will, 

To the prime of the Past and the sweet of the year. 



And so " my brook " passes into the ocean. 



INDEX 



INDEX 



Abolitionism, 51, 56, 60. 

Adams, Charles Francis, his opinion 
of Spain, 216, 217 ; memher of the 
Saturday Club, 202; minister to 
Spain, 239. 

Adams, President John Quincy, his 
action regarding Cuba, 221. 

Adams, Samuel, credits Mayhe-w 
with idea of colonial federation, 9. 

Address at the quarter-millennial 
celebration of Harvard, by J. R. 
L., 268. 

Admiralty law, 218. 

Advertiser. See Boston Advertiser. 

Agassiz, Louis, lecturer before Low- 
ell Institute, 197-199 ; professor 
at Harvard, 197, 198, 268 ; mem- 
ber of the Saturday Club, 202. 

Aleott, A. Bronson, 43. 

Aldrich, Thomas Bailey, editor of 
The Atlantic Monthly, 149, 151 ; 
member of the Saturday Club, 
202. 

Alfonso XII., of Spain, 216, 223, 224. 

Allen, Thomas J., 67. 

Allen & Ticknor, booksellers, 65, 
155. 

Allston, Washington, friend of Dr. 
Charles Lowell, 12 ; his pictures 
in Boston, 58. 

Almakkari's History, translated by 
Gayangos, 235. 

Alpha Delta Phi, at Harvard, 26-29 ; 
society formed at Hamilton Col- 
lege, N. Y., 27. 

Amadeo, king of Spain, abdication 
of, 208, 216. 



Amadis, 18. 

American Academy, 152. 

American ministers to England, 239. 

Andrew, Governor, 182, 202. 

Andrews, C. C, 248. 

Anglomaniacs, snubbed by J. R. L., 
275. 

Anti-Slavery Society, 173, 174. 

Anti-Slavery Standard. See Na- 
tional Anti-Slavery Standard. 

Appleton, Thomas Gold, 202, 266. 

"Arcturus, The," 84. 

Armstrong, Governor, 155. 

Atlantic Monthly, The, 83, 145, 150- 
152, 156-162, 165-167, 171, 179, 
270. 

Atlas, The Boston, edited by Richard 
Hildreth, 69. 

Aube'pine, Monsieur d', nom deplume 
of Hawthorne, 84. 

Bachi, Pietro, professor at Harvard, 

128. 
Bacon, John, 26. 
Balliol College, Oxford, compared 

with Harvard, 22. 
Ball's Bluff, battle of, 183. 
Bancroft, George, 68, 152, 155, 239. 
"Band of Brothers and Sisters, 

The," 71, 72. 
Barrett, Elizabeth. See Browning, 

Elizabeth Barrett. 
Barrows, Mr., extracts from J. R. 

L.'s letters to, 242. 
Battle of the Nile, The (song), 75. 
" Baxter's Boys They Built a Mill," 

75. 



290 



INDEX 



Beaver Brook, 177, 267, 284. 

Beecher, Henry Ward, 104. 

Beefsteak Club, 126. 

Bellini, Charles, professor of modern 
languages at Harvard, 126. 

Bellows, Henry Whitney, trained in 
English by E. T. Channing, 19. 

Bells and Pomegranates, 85. 

Bible, first American, 154. 

Bigelow, Jacob, lectures in Boston, 
106. 

Biglow, Hosea, 210, 211. 

Biglow Papers, 44, 115, 124, 163, 
176, 177; first series, popular in 
England, 98, 99 ; occasion of, 162 ; 
second series, 164, 167, 181 ; criti- 
cism of, 277, 278. 

Birmingham address. See Demo- 
cracy. 

Blackwood (magazine), 37, 82, 160. 

Blaine, James G., relations with J. 
R. L., 259. 

Blockade-running during the Civil 
War, 218-220. 

Board of Fellows of Harvard Uni- 
versity, 15. 

Bonner, Robert, publishes Lowell's 
poem, My Brook, in New York 
Ledger, 284. 

Boston Advertiser, edited by Nathan 
Hale, 35, 79, 114; publishes J. R. 
L.'s lectures, 114. 

Boston as a publishing centre, 152, 
153. 

Boston Athenaeum, 68, 152. 

Boston, in the forties, 55-58 ; changes 
in, 264, 265. 

Boston Miscellany of Literature and 
Fashion, The, 29, 35, 82, 84-87, 
95, 147. 

Boston Latin School, 128, 182. 

Boston Lyceum, 110. 

Boston Public Library, 66. 

Boston " school of history," 68. 

Bowen, Francis, professor at Har- 
vard, 50, 170. 

Bowker, R. R., 257, 258. 



Bradbury & Soden, publishers, 82, 

83. 
Braham, John, the singer, 58. 
Briggs, Charles F., 84, 176. 
Brooks, Charles T., 44, 185. 
Brooks, Phillips, 202. 
Browning, Elizabeth Barrett, 84, 

90. 
Browning, Robert, 85, 258. 
Browning's Hebrew traits, 276. 
Brownson, Orestes A., 57. 
Bryant, William Cullen, 97. 
Brunetti Latini, teacher of Dante, 

49. 
Buchanan, James, member of the 

Ostend conference, 217. 
"Buddha of the West," 203. 
Bunyan, remark of Macaulay con- 
cerning, 277. 
Burnett, Mabel Lowell, daughter of 

J. R. L., 143, 144, 188, 265, 267. 
" Byles," pseudonym of Edmund 

Quincy, 176. 

Cabot, J. Elliot, member of the 
Saturday Club, 157, 158, 202 ; re- 
mark quoted, 203. 

Calderon, Serafin Estebanez (the po- 
et), J. R. L.'s love for, 271. 

Calderon Collantes, Fernando, 216. 

Calderon de la Barca, Madam, gov- 
erness in the Spanish royal, family, 
224, 225. 

Calderon de la Barca, Pedro, 224. 

Cambridgeport Women's Total Ab- 
stinence Society, 111. 

Canovas, Sefior, 227, 228. 

Carlyle, his books reprinted in Amer- 
ica ; their influence on Lowell, 21 ; 
remark on Rousseau, 46 ; his pop- 
ularity in Cambridge, 60, 61 ; Lon- 
don lectures, 105, 106 ; his Chart- 
ism, 136. 

Carpenter, George O., 67. 

Carter, James, 40. 

Carter, Robert, friend of J. R. L., 
86, 91, 114. 



INDEX 



291 



Cathedral, The, Emerson's criticism 
of, 164. 

Changeling-, The, 150. 

Channing, Edward Tyrrel, professor 
at Harvard, 18, 19, 21, 35, 41, 128; 
lectures in Boston, 67. 

Channing-, Walter, 22. 

Channing, William Ellery (the 
younger), 43. 

Channing, William Francis, aboli- 
tionist, 22. 

Chase, Thomas, professor at Har- 
vard, 170. 

Chapman, Mrs., abolitionist, 175. 

Chauncy, Charles, president of Har- 
vard, 194. 

Cheerful Yesterdays, 100. 

Cherokee warrior of Lowell's class 
poem, 51. 

Child, Francis J., professor at Har- 
vard, 170, 184-187; his War 
Songs for Freemen, 185, 186. 

Child, Lydia Maria, contributor to 
the National Anti-Slavery Stand- 
ard, 97, 98. 

Choate, Joseph H., 40. 

Choate, Rufus, lectures in Boston, 
67 ; J. R. L.'s article on, 166. 

Christian Examiner, 152. 

Church, the, position of, on the is- 
sues between North and South, 
100. 

Cincinnati Public Library, Rufus 
King a founder of, 32. 

Civil Service Reform, 261. 

Civil War, beginning of, 180. 

Clarke, James Freeman, his classical 
scholarship, 14 ; trained in Eng- 
lish by E. T. Channing, 19 ; mem- 
ber of the Saturday Club, 202. 

Clarendon Press, Oxford, 254. 

Class Day at Harvard, 39. 

Class poem, Lowell's, 51-53. 

Cleveland, Grover, elected president, 
259 ; does not retain J. R. L. as 
minister to England, 261. 

Cleveland, Henry Russell, contribu- 



tor to the North American Re- 
view, 61. 

Clough, Arthur Hugh, in Cambridge, 
135, 136 ; acquaintance with Em- 
erson, 136, 137. 

"Club, The," 71. 

" Coercion Act," 243. 

Coleridge's poems published in 
Philadelphia, 23. 

College life in America in J. R. L.'s 
time, 127-131. 

College societies at Harvard, 16. 

Commemoration Ode, 8, 164; de- 
livery of, 188-191. 

Commencement dinners at Harvard, 
117. 

Commission of Thirty, 206. 

Concord, Mass., scene of Lowell's 
" rustication," 43-54. 

Congregational church, schism in, 
10. 

Constitution of the United States, 
celebration of the adoption of, 
268, 270; J. R. L.'s address, 269. 

Cooke, George Willis, 201. 

Cooke, Josiah Parsons, professor at 
Harvard, 170, 197. 

Coolidge, James Ivers Trecothiek, 
classmate of J. R. L., 27, 32 ; con- 
tributor to Harvardiana, 36 ; class 
orator, 39. 

Corner Bookstore. See Old Corner 
Bookstore. 

Cotton, John, 103, 104. 

Courier, The, 162. 

Craigie House, 137. 

Crocker & Brewster, publishers, 153, 
155. 

Cromwell's Head, sign of, 65. 

Cuba, negotiations in regard to, be- 
tween United States and Spain, 
208, 217, 221, 227, 228. 

Cummings & Hilliard, publishers, 
155. 

Curtis, George Ticknor, 71. 

Cushing, Caleb, J. R. L.'s article 
on, 166. 



292 



INDEX 



Custer, Gen. George A., 182. 
Cutler, Elbridge Jefferson, instructor 
at Harvard, 132, 133, 135, 185. 

Daguerreotype, announced by Da- 
guerre, in 1839, 31. 

Daily Advertiser. See Boston Ad- 
vertiser. 

Dallas, George M., 156. 

Dana, Richard Henry, president of 
Phi Beta Kappa, 117; member 
of the Saturday Club, 202, 266; 
friend of J. R. L., 253. 

Dana Law School, 183. 

Dante, J. R. L.'s lectures on, 130, 
140, 142, 144. 

Dante, quotation from, 49. 

Death of Queen Mercedes (sonnet), 
233. 

Democracy, Lowell's address at 
Birmingham, 237, 252, 253, 268. 

Democratic Review, Hawthorne's 
stories in, 84. 

Dictionary House, 255. 

Diplomatic Correspondence, edited 
by Sparks, 69. 

Diplomatic correspondence of J. R. 
L., 242-244. 

Donne, Dr., 282. 

Douglas, Stephen A., 200. 

Dublin University Magazine, 160. 

Dunlap, Frances. See Lowell, Fran- 
ces Dunlap. 

Duyckinck, E. A., editor of The 
Arcturus, 84. 

Dwight, John Sullivan, 202. 

Ebeling collection of early American 
authorities, 68. 

Edinburgh Review, The, 62, 168,235. 

Election in November, The, 171. 

Eliot, Charles William, president of 
Harvard, 40, 120, 129, 130, 170, 
193, 196, 202. 

Eliot, Samuel, his classical scholar- 
ship, 14 ; pupil of William Wells, 
14. 



Elliott, Dr., oculist, 89, 90. 

Ellis, Rev. Dr. Rufus, classmate of 
J. R. L., 32 ; contributor to Har- 
vardiana, 36 ; commencement ora- 
tor, 54. 

Ellsler, Fanny, 58. 

Elmwood, home of James Russell 
Lowell's family, 1 ; occupied by 
Thomas Oliver in 1774, 1 ; confis- 
cated by the state after Oliver's 
departure, 2 ; lived in by Elbridge 
Gerry, 3 ; used as a hospital dur- 
ing the Revolution, 3 ; description, 
3, 6, 11, 12 ; occupied by J. R. L. 
after his marriage, 98, 126, 143, 
145, 150, 209 ; return to, after resi- 
dence abroad, 263-265, 267, 270; 
Dr. Hale's last visit to Dr. Charles 
Lowell there, 101 ; birthplace of 
James Jackson Lowell, 182. 

Emerson, Ellen, 202. 

Emerson, Ralph Waldo, trained in 
English by E. T. Channing, 19; 
his copy of Tennyson's first vol- 
ume of poems, 21 ; Lowell's first 
acquaintance with, 48, 49 ; ad- 
dress before Cambridge divinity 
school, 48 ; contributes to the 
North American Review, 61, 63 ; 
literary work as a profession, 63, 
64 ; English Traits, sale of, 63, 64 ; 
connection with Mr. Phillips, 64 ; 
remarks quoted, 69, 129 ; lectures 
in London, 105 ; at Dartmouth 
College, 108; in Boston, 59, 67, 
110 ; friendship with Arthur Hugh 
Clough, 136, 137; publication of 
books, 152 ; member of the Sat- 
urday Club, 157, 158; English 
Traits, 63, 64, 154; criticism of 
Lowell's The Cathedral, 164 ; Phi 
Beta Kappa addresses, 202-205 ; 
member of the Saturday Club, 
157, 201 ; Bowdoin prize disserta- 
tions, 202 ; not infallible in judg- 
ing character, 275. 

Emerson, William, 202. 



INDEX 



293 



Emigrant Aid Company, destruction 
of hotel of the, 180. 

English Traits, sale of, 63, 64. 

English attitude towards America in 
1863, 251. 

English friends and acquaintances 
of J. E. L., 257-259. 

Esk River, 280. 

Euripides, 128. 

Eustis, Henry Lawrence, 27. 

Eustis, John Fenwick, 26. 

Evarts, William M., 214, 231, 239. 

Evening Post, edited by Bryant and 
Gay, 177. 

Everett, Alexander, 69, 152 ; as min- 
ister to Spain, offers $100,000,000 
for Cuba, 217 ; remark quoted, 
153. 

Everett, Edward, lectures in Boston, 
57, 67, 106 ; author, 69, 152 ; re- 
mark quoted, 128; president of 
Harvard, 133, 143 ; his opinion of 
the Transcendentalists, 203; con- 
gressman, 212 ; opinion of Ameri- 
can enthusiasm for things English, 
237 ; minister to England, 239. 

Everett, William, 40, 212. 

Fable for Critics, 58, 124, 163. 

Fair Oaks, battle of, 183. 

Fantasy, 85. 

Federal party, 17. 

Federation of colonies suggested by 

Mayhew, 9. 
Felton, Cornelius Conway, president 

of Harvard, 41, 129, 130, 134, 

170, 193, 194; contributor to the 

North American Review, 61, 194 ; 

member of the Saturday Club, 

202. 
Fenians, 241. 
Field, JoTm W., friend of J. R. L., 

253. 
Fields, James T., 57, 65-67 ; editor 

of The Atlantic Monthly, 151, 

166; bookseller and publisher, 

154, 155. 



Fields, Osgood & Co., publishers, 
169. 

Fingal, relation to Fenians, 241. 

First Class Book, 20. 

First Snowf aU, The, 12, 150. 

Fish, Hamilton, instructions to Mr. 
Sickles regarding Spanish affairs, 
208, 225. 

Fitful Head, The, 4. 

Five of Clubs, The, 60. 

Flaxman's pictures, 86. 

Forbes, John Murray, 202. 

Foreign press on America, 209, 210. 

Fox, Charles James, 9. 

Franklin, Benjamin, minister to 
France, 213. 

Frazer's Magazine, 160. 

Frelinghuysen, F. T., letter of J. R. 
L. to, 244. 

French travelers in America, refer- 
ence to, 121. 

Frost, Rev. Barzillai, Lowell's tutor 
during his " rustication," 41, 43- 
47 ; instructor at Harvard, 44. 

Frost, Mrs. Barzillai, 47. 

Fuller, Margaret, 58. 

Gage, General, in Boston, 2. 

Galilee, the Misses, Whitby land- 
ladies, 281. 

Galignani's newspaper, 209. 

Gardiner, Colonel, of Preston Pans, 
224. 

Garrison, Wendell Phillips, 272. 

Garrison, William Lloyd, establishes 
the Liberator, 56, 57, 174 ; influ- 
ence as a lecturer, 101, 103, 104 ; 
reference to, by J. R. L., 175. 

Garrisonians, 173. 

Gay, Sydney Howard, journalist and 
historian, 97, 149, 173-179. 

Gayangos, Pascual de, 235, 236. 

George, Henry, arrested in Ireland, 
241. 

German literature at Harvard, 19. 

Gerry, Elbridge, lived atElmwood, 3. 

Getting Up, 85. 



294 



INDEX 



" Giaeopo il Rigiovinato," 262. 

Gilder, R. W., 262. 

Gladstone, William Ewart, his first 
knowledge of Emerson, 108; 
prime minister, 249; his retire- 
ment, 250. 

Godey's Lady's Book, 82. 

Gower, Levison. See Granville, Lord. 

Graham's Magazine, 82. 

Grant, U. S., his action regarding 
Cuba, 221, 226 ; anecdote of, 274. 

Granville, Lord, association with 
Lowell, 240, 241, 246-250. 

Gray, Asa, professor at Harvard, 196, 
197. 

" Gray, Billy," 264. 

Greeley, Horace, editor of the Trib- 
une, 97, 175; attitude towards 
Lincoln, 178, 179. 

Greenleaf, Simon, professor of law 
at Harvard, 32, 81. 

Guyot, Arnold, story of his dinner- 
party, 199. 

Hale, Charles, 251. 

Hale, Horatio, member of Wilkes's 

exploring expedition, 25, 26 ; 

prints vocabulary of Micmac In- 
dian language, 26, 27. 
Hale, John Parker, minister to Spain, 

218. 
Hale, Nathan, Jr., at Harvard, 27, 

29, 30; editor, 35,36, 83-86, 114; 

member of the " Band," 70, 73, 

74. 
Hale, Sarah Everett, 71, 72. 
Hall, Newman, 194. 
Hancock, Governor, 18. 
Harrington, Lord, 248. 
Harris, Clarendon, 154. 
Harrison, President, speech at New 

York, at the centennial of the 

adoption of the Constitution, 269, 

270. 
Hart, , referred to in J. R. L.'s 

correspondence, 242. 
Hart, Albert B., review of diplo- 



matic relations between United 
States and Spain, in Harper's 
Monthly, 218, 221. 

Harvard College, sends Pietas et 
Gratulatio to George HI., 7 ; life 
at, 15-26, 36 ; library, 16, 68, 271 ; 
Phi Beta Kappa and Commence- 
ment dinners, 117; modern lan- 
guage work, 126, 127, 130; growth 
of the college, 128-130, 133, 134, 
192 ; professors contemporary with 
Lowell, 170 ; quarter-millennial 
celebration, 198. 

Harvard men in the Civil War, 180. 

Harvard Society of Alumni, J. R. 
L. president of, 117. 

Harvardiana, 25, 29, 30, 35-39, 93, 
94 ; Lowell one of the editors of, 
25, 35-39. 

Haskell, Daniel N., 67. 

Hawthorne, Nathaniel, in Concord, 
43, 44 ; in Boston, 58 ; a contribu- 
tor to the Boston Miscellany of 
Literature and Fashion, 84 ; pub- 
lishes books, 152 ; member of the 
Saturday Club, 202 ; remark on 
Englishwomen, 275. 

Hayes, Rutherford B., elected Pre- 
sident, 212, 213 ; appoints J. R. L. 
minister to England, 234, 238. 

Hayward, Charles, one of the editors 
of Harvardiana, 25-27. 

Heath, Frank, college friend of 
J. R. L., prominent in Confederate 
army, 95. 

Hebrew origins studied by J. R. L., 
276. 

Hecuba, 128. 

Hedge, Dr. F. H., his Phi Beta 
Kappa address, 128, 129 ; contrib- 
utor to War Songs for Freemen, 
185. 

Hercules and the Hydra, 211. 

Herder, Johann Gottfried von, 46. 

Hermann, Friedrich B. W. von, 58. 

Higginson, Thomas Wentworth, pu- 
pil of William Wells, 13; his 



INDEX 



295 



classical scholarship, 14 ; trained 
in English by E. T. Channing, 19 ; 
Cheerful Yesterdays, 100 ; a con- 
tributor to The Atlantic Monthly, 
166. 

Hildreth, Richard, historian, 69, 
152. 

Hildreth, Samuel Tenney, one of 
the editors of Harvardiana, 25- 
27. 

Hill, Thomas, president of Harvard, 
129, 130, 134, 193, 194-196. 

Hillard, George Stillman, contribu- 
tor to North American Review, 
61. 

Hilliard & Gray, publishers, 153, 
155. 

Historical Society, library of, 68. 

Hoar, George Frisbie, 202. 

Hoar, Judge, president of Phi Beta 
Kappa, 117 ; member of the Satur- 
day Club, 202. 

Hoar family, in Concord, 44. 

Hoffman, August Heinrich, 46. 

Holden, Mr., 122. 

Holmes, John, his classical scholar- 
ship, 14, 188, 266. 

Holmes, Oliver Wendell, pupil of 
William Wells, 13 ; classical schol- 
arship, 14; trained in English by 
E. T. Channing, 19 ; after-dinner 
speaker, 40; heard in public in 
Boston in the 40's, 57, 67 ; note 
to J. R. L. quoted, 118, 119 ; mem- 
ber of the Saturday Club, 157, 
158, 201 ; referred to in speaking 
of the Atlantic, 160; My Hunt 
after the Captain, 161 ; the Au- 
tocrat, 165 ; contributor to War 
Songs for Freemen, 185; calls 
Emerson the Buddha of the West, 
203 ; later companionship with J. 
R. L., 266. 

"Hospital for Incurable Children" 
(anecdote), 263. 

Hotel France et Lorraine, Lowell's 
home in Paris, 206, 207. 



House of Commons, visited by 
Charles Lowell, 19. 

Howe, Dr. and Mrs. Estes, 145, 
266. 

Howe, Mrs. Julia Ward, 185, 186. 

Howells, William Dean, contributor 
to and editor of The Atlantic 
Monthly, 151 ; contributor to the 
North American, 169 ; member 
of the Saturday Club, 202. 

Hughes, Thomas, friend of J. R. L. 
and guest at Elmwood, 258, 259. 

Hughes, Mrs. Thomas, 259. 

Hunt, William Morris, 202. 

Hunter, Mrs. Leo, 257. 

Hutten, Heinrich von, member of 
Kossuth's suite, 138; translates 
Uncle Tom's Cabin into German, 
138. 

Hutten, Ulrich von, 138. 

Immortality, Lowell's belief in, 281, 
282. 

In Memoriam, published by Tieknor 
& Fields, 65 ; anecdote concern- 
ing, 65, 66. 

Independent in Politics, The, ad- 
dress before New York Reform 
Club, 270. 

Inglis, Fanny. See Calderon de la 
Barca, Madam. 

Irish-Americans not satisfied with 
J. R. L. as minister to England, 
238. 

Irish sympathizers' criticism of J. R. 
L., 276. 

Irving, Washington, minister to 
Spain, 213. 

Isabella II., of Spain, 220. 

Jackson, Judge, 58. 

James, Henry, 202. 

Jefferson, Thomas, hated by Josiah 
Quincy, 18 ; at William and Mary's 
College, 126. 

Jennison, James, professor at Har- 
vard, 170. 



296 



INDEX 



Jewish strain in Lowell family, 276. 
Jowett, Life of, 22 ; his opinion of 

sermons, 99. 
July reviewed by September, 171. 
Jungfrau, first ascent of, by Agassiz, 

198. 

Kansas, struggle for freedom of, 
101, 171, 218. 

Keats, John, his poems, published 
in Philadelphia, 23; J. R. L.'s 
admiration of, 89. 

King, Augusta Gilman, 71, 72. 

King, Caroline Howard, 71. 

King, John Gallison, friend of J. R. 
L., 70, 74, 79. 

King, John Glen, distinguished law- 
yer, 79. 

King, Rufus, at Harvard, 27, 29- 
33, 35, 36 ; lawyer and citizen of 
eminence in Cincinnati, 31, 32 ; 
member of the Constitutional Con- 
vention of Ohio, 32 ; Dean of the 
Faculty of the Cincinnati Law 
School, 32; contributor to Har- 
vardiana, 36. 

King, Rufus (the elder), leader of 
Federalist party, 31. 

King, Thomas Starr, settles in Bos- 
ton, 67 ; bright sayings, 106, 107. 

"King's Arms, The," 74. 

Knickerbocker Magazine, 82, 83, 
160. 

Koerner, Gustav, minister to Spain, 
218. 

Lane, General, 183. 

Lane, George M., professor at Har- 
vard, 170. 

Lass of the Pamunky, The, 186. 

Laud, Bishop, 103, 104. 

Lawrence, Abbott, minister to Eng- 
land, 239. 

Lawrence, Amos Adams, anecdote 
of, 264. 

Lecture system. See Lyceum system. 

Ledger. See New York Ledger, 284. 



Leland, Charles Godfrey, 186. 

Leland, Henry Perry, 186. 

Lexington, battle of, 2. 

Liberator, The, 56, 174. 

Liberty Bell, The, 97-101. 

Libraries in Boston before 1850, 66, 
68. 

Lilliburlero, 186. 

Lilliput circle of Boston and Cam- 
bridge, 51. 

Lincoln, Abraham, 172, 178, 200, 
201, 218. 

Lincoln, Robert, reminiscence of 
Lowell, 142, 143 ; anecdote of his 
entrance to Harvard, 200, 201. 

Lippitt, George Warren, at Harvard, 
27, 29, 30, 35, 36 ; secretary of 
legation at Vienna, 29 ; Unitarian 
preacher, 32, 33. 

Literary Messenger, The, 82. 

Lochinvar, 280. 

London Quarterly Review, The, 62, 
168. 

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth, 
" Smith professor " at Harvard, 
19-21, 40, 41, 128, 130; contribu- 
tor to the North American Re- 
view, 61, 62; succeeded in his 
professorship by J. R. L., 127; 
friendship with J. R. L., 135, 137 ; 
kindness to Heinrich von Hutten, 
138, 144 ; member of the Satur- 
day Club, 157, 202; contributor 
to the Atlantic, 165, 166; anec- 
dote of, 187; dies during J. R. 
L.'s residence in England, 266. 

Longfellow, Samuel, 31. 

Longfellow Park, 278. 

Loring, Caleb Williams, 161. 

Loring, Charles Greeley, Boston 
lawyer, 81. 

Loring, Frederick Wadsworth, 131, 
132, 185. 

Loring, George Bailey, intimate 
friend of J. R. L., 36, 58, 80 ; con- 
tributor to Harvardiana, 36, 109, 
132. 



INDEX 



297 



Louis Napoleon. See Napoleon III. 

Lovering, Joseph, professor at Har- 
vard, 134, 170. 

Lowell, A. Lawrence, extracts from, 
and references to, his memoir of 
J. R. L., 149, 162-164, 172, 210, 
260, 270. 

Lowell, Blanche, daughter of J. R. 
L., 149. 

Lowell, Charles, brother of J. R. L., 
12. 

Lowell, Charles, father of J. R. L., 
minister of West Church, Boston, 
1, 6-12, 53, 54, 96, 101. 

Lowell, Charles Russell, nephew 
of J. R. L., killed during the 
Civil War, 180-182. 

Lowell, Frances Dunlap, wife of J. 
R. L., 145, 163, 205, 207, 208, 234, 
235, 240, 241, 259, 260. 

Lowell, Francis Cabot, founder of 
the city of Lowell, 7. 

Lowell, Harriet Spence, mother of 
J. R. L., 3, 4, 276, 283. 

Lowell, James Jackson, nephew of 
J. R. L., killed during the Civil 
War, 180-184. 

Lowell, James Russell, parentage, 
1,3; boyhood, 1,3-5, 11-14; 
early views on slavery, 8 ; college 
days, 15-21 ; one of the editors of 
Harvardiana, 25, 35 ; member of 
Alpha Delta Phi, 27 ; early poems, 
30, 34, 39; appointed class poet, 
39 ; " rusticated " in consequence of 
indifference to college rules, 40, 
41 ; stay at Concord, 43-54 ; class 
poem, 50-53 ; choice of a profes- 
sion, 58, 59, 69 ; intimate friends 
70-77 ; abandons law for litera- 
ture, 81, 82, 85 ; a contributor to 
The Boston Miscellany of Litera- 
ture and Fashion, 35, 82-86 ; with 
Robert Carter establishes The 
Pioneer, which dies after three 
months, 86-91 ; goes to New York 
for treatment of his eyes, 88-90 ; 



marries Maria White, 1844, 92 ; 
publishes A Year's Life, 1841, 93, 
94; spends winter of 1844-45 in 
Philadelphia, 96; writes for The 
Liberty Bell and the National 
Anti-Slavery Standard, 97, 98, 173, 
175; publishes The Biglow Pa- 
pers, first series, 98 ; lectures in 
behalf of the anti-slavery and 
temperance reforms, and on liter- 
ary subjects, 100, 101, 109-117; 
gives Lowell Institute course, 112- 
117 ; president of the Harvard So- 
ciety of Alumni, 117-121; pre- 
sident of the Phi Beta Kappa of 
Cambridge, 117-121 ; death of Mrs. 
Lowell, 125 ; goes to Europe, 125 ; 
"Smith professor" at Harvard, 
125, 127, 130, 132-135, 137-139, 
141-144, 164, 170, 171, 193-201 ; 
marries Miss Frances Dunlap, 
145 ; editorial work, 145-169, 179, 
180; member of the Saturday 
Club, 157, 158, 201 ; goes abroad, 
163 ; political essays, 171, 175 ; 
contributor to the National Anti- 
Slavery Standard, 175-177 ; losses 
of relatives in the Civil War, 180 ; 
visits Paris, 205-208 ; Rome, 209 ; 
returns to Elmwood, 209; his 
stand in political matters, 211 ; 
presidential elector, 212, 213 ; 
offered several foreign missions, 
appointed to Spain, 192, 213, 214 ; 
difficulties of the position, 215- 
221, 225 ; life in Madrid, 228-234 ; 
transferred to England, 234 ; life 
in London, 238-261 ; death of the 
second Mrs. Lowell, 241, 259; 
tour on the Continent, 253 ; returns 
to America, 261, 262 ; last years, 
262-284; public addresses and 
readings, 266,269, 278, 279; Low- 
ell Institute lectures, 270, 279; 
later literary work, 270, 271 ; ety- 
mological study, 271, 272 ; death, 
262. 



298 



INDEX 



Lowell, John, minister at Newbury- 
port, 6. 

Lowell, John [2d], judge, 6, 7 ; his 
opposition to slavery, 6 ; a verse- 
writer, 7. 

Lowell, John [3d], founder of the 
Lowell Institute, 7, 9, 112, 113. 

Lowell, John, judge, great grandson 
of John Lowell [2d] above, 202. 

Lowell, John Amory, 197. 

Lowell, Mabel. See Burnett, Mabel 
Lowell. 

Lowell, Maria White, wife of J. R. 
L., 71, 72, 75, 76, 78, 86, 87, 91-93 ; 
writes for The Liberty Bell and 
National Anti-Slavery Standard, 
97; death of, 125, 163. 

Lowell, Mary. See Putnam, Mary 
Lowell. 

Lowell, Percival, 7. 

Lowell, Rebecca, sister of J. R. L., 
11. 

Lowell, Robert Traill Spence, bro- 
ther of J. R. L., 11, 267, 276. 

Lowell, Rose, daughter of J. R. L., 
149, 163. 

Lowell, Walter, son of J. R. L., 163. 

Lowell, William, brother of J. R. 
L., 11, 12. 

Lowell factory girls, 83. 

Lowell Institute, the, 7, 66, 67, 112, 
113 ; lectures before, by J. R. L., 
112, 113, 270, 279. 

" Lyceum system," 99, 100, 102-110, 
112, 152 ; influence of, in develop- 
ing anti-slavery sentiment, 104. 

Lyman, Mrs., Life of, 167. 

Lyttelton, Lady, friend of J. R. L. 
and Mrs. L., 

Macaulay, T. B., remark on Bun- 
yan, 277. 

Macaulay's History, published in 
Boston, 156. 

Man without a Country, The, pub- 
lished in The Atlantic Monthly, 
161, 162. 



Mann, Horace, 194. 

Mansfield, Lord, decision of, in re- 
gard to slavery in England (Som- 
erset case), 6. 

Mason, John Y., member of the Os- 
tend conference, 217. 

Mason and Slidell, J. R. L.'s writing 
concerning, 260. 

Massachusetts Bay Colony, 102, 103. 

Massachusetts Bill of Rights, anti- 
slavery clauses, 6, 8. 

Massachusetts Historical Society, 
68, 110, 152. 

Massachusetts Society for Diffusing 
Useful Knowledge, 110. 

Mayhew, Thomas, pastor of West 
Church, first suggested federation 
of American colonies, 9. 

McClellan, Gen. George B., 181. 

McCoil, Fein, 241. 

Mclnerny, John, Irish suspect, 244.' 

McLeod, Mrs., teacher in Boston, 
224. 

McMicken bequest, 32. 

Mead, Edwin D., article on the Pio- 
neer, 87, 88. 

Mechanics' Association, 110. 

Mechanics' Institutes, 105. 

Memorial Hall, Cambridge, 118. 

Mercantile Library Association, 66, 
67, 110. 

Mercedes, queen of Alphonso XII. 
232, 233. 

Mexican War, 162. 

Miller, William, Second Adventist, 
57. 

Minister's position in New England 
in the 18th century, 9. 

Miscellany, The Boston. See Bos- 
ton Miscellany of Literature and 
Fashion. 

Missouri Compromise, 8, 96. 

Modern language instruction at Har- 
vard, 15, 126, 130; at William 
and Mary's, 126. 

Modoc Indians, 210. 

Monroe, James, publisher, 154. 



INDEX 



299 



Montgomery, Robert, 281. 

Monthly Anthology, The, 62, 152. 

Montpensier, Duchess of, 219. 

Morris, Gouverneur, opinion of, on 
the Union, 18. 

Morse, John T., jr., his Life of Dr. 
Holmes, 11, 201. 

Mosby, Colonel, 182. 

Motley, John Lothrop, publishes 
Merrymount, 69; member of the 
Saturday Club, 157, 158, 202; 
contributor to the Atlantic, 165, 
166 ; the North American, 169 ; 
minister to Austria, 213 ; to Eng- 
land, 239 ; anecdote of, 263. 

Moxon, Edward, 85. 

Murray's Dictionary, 253-257, 272. 

Music (poem), 12. 

"Mutual Admiration Society," 57, 
59-66, 134, 169. 

My Brook, 284-286. 

My First Client, 80, 85. 

Napoleon III. (Louis Charles Napo- 
leon Bonaparte), his action during 
the American Civil War, 218-220. 

Nation, The, occasion of its com- 
position, 210. 

National Anti-Slavery Standard, 97, 
101, 149, 163, 171-179. 

Natural History Society at Harvard, 
foundation of, 23. 

New England Emigrant Aid Com- 
pany, 212. 

New England Magazine, first, 82 ; 
present series, 87, 201. 

New Tariff Bill, The, 171. 

New York Ledger, 284. 

New York Reform Club, 270. 

New York Tribune, The, during the 
Civil War, 175-179. 

Niagara, described by Rev. Barzil- 
lai Frost, 45. 

"Nightingale in the Study, The," 
271. 

Nolan, Philip, 217. 

Noma, 4, 277. 



North American Review, early char- 
acter and influence of, 59-64, 82, 
152, 167, 168 ; edited by Palfrey, 
59-61 ; by Edward and Alexan- 
der Everett, 62, 63; by Lowell 
and Norton, 145, 167-169, 171, 
179. 

North, Christopher, 37. 

Norton, Caroline, 188. 

Norton, Grace, letters to, 229, 281. 

Norton, Charles Eliot, friend of J. 
R. L. and editor of his letters, 33, 
78, 80, 122, 135, 265, 266 ; editor, 
with J. R. L., of the North Ameri- 
can Review, 151, 168, 169 ; mem- 
ber of the Saturday Club, 202. 

Ode, 85, 86. 

Odeon, 57. 

Old and New, edited by Nathan 
Hale, 35; by E. E. Hale, 164, 
216. 

Old Corner Bookstore, 57, 64, 66. 

Old English Dramatists, first draft 
of, 29; published in Boston Mis- 
cellany, 85; reception by the 
press, 92 ; later series, 270, 279. 

Oliver, Thomas, lieutenant-governor 
of Massachusetts, lives at Elm- 
wood in 1774, 1 ; resigns his com- 
mission, 2. 

Oriental Society, 235. 

Ostend, conference at, 217. 

Oxford Dictionary. See Murray's 
Dictionary. 

Page, William, 73, 266. 

Paine, John Knowles, 189. 

Palfrey, John Gorham, member of 
Harvard divinity faculty, editor of 
the North American Review, 59- 
61 ; reads Carlyle's French Revo- 
lution, 61 ; remark quoted, 68 ; 
devotes himself to historical work, 
69. 

Palmerston, Lord, 249. 

Parker, Theodore, lectures in Bos- 



300 



INDEX 



ton and elsewhere, 101, 103, 104, 
106. 

Parkman, Francis, 202. 

Parsons, T. W., 57. 

Payne, John Howard, diplomatic 
correspondence concerning- final 
disposition of his remains, 245- 
247. 

Peabody, Andrew Preston, acting 
president of Harvard, 196. 

Peabody, Elizabeth, 58, 84. 

Peirce, Benjamin, professor at Har- 
vard, 24, 41, 128, 134. 

Peirce, James Mills, professor at 
Harvard, 170, 202. 

Perkins, Colonel, 264. 

Perry, Horatio, secretary of Ameri- 
can Legation at Madrid, 219. 

Perseus and the dragon, 211. 

Phi Beta Kappa dinners at Harvard, 
40, 117, 203. 

Phi Beta Kappa fraternity, 27; J. 
R. L., president of Cambridge 
chapter, 117; Dr. Hedge's ad- 
dress, 128. 

Philippines, the, 159. 

Philistinism, 211. 

Phillips, Moses Dresser, publisher. 
See Phillips & Sampson. 

Phillips, Wendell, 57 ; as a lecturer, 
101, 103, 104, 106, 108. 

Phillips & Sampson, publishers, 64, 
150-159. 

Philological Society undertakes a 
dictionary, 254. 

Photography, invention of, 31 ; first 
photograph taken in New Eng- 
land, 31. 

Pickens-and-Stealin's Rebellion, 

The, 171. 

Pickering correspondence, 217. 

Pierce, Franklin, administration of, 
180, 218. 

Pierce, John, of Brookline, 10. 

Pierpont, John, 174. 

Pietas et Gratulatio, 7. 

Pillsbury, Parker, 103. 



Pioneer, The, established by Lowell 

and Robert Carter, 86-91, 95, 147, 

149. 
Polk, James K., 156, 217. 
Portfolio, The, 82. 
Power of Music, The, 13. 
Power of Sound, The, 121-123. 
Prescott, William Hickling, 69, 152, 

159; contributor to the Atlantic, 

165, 166 ; member of the Saturday 

Club, 202. 
Present Crisis, The, 150. 
President's Policy, The, 171. 
Prose and poetry, Lowell's use of, 

274. 
Publishing houses in Boston, 152- 

157. 
Putnam, Mary Lowell, sister of 

J. R. L., 4, 5, 11, 12, 266. 
Putnam, William Lowell, nephew 

of J. R. L., killed during the 

Civil War, 180, 181, 184, 185. 

Quarter - Millennial celebration at 
Harvard, 198, 268. 

Question of the Hour, The, 171. 

Quincy, Edmund, 176. 

Quincy, Josiah, president of Har- 
vard, 15, 17, 18, 40, 41, 125, 133, 
192, 193; mayor of Boston, 17, 
18 ; belief in guidance of a " Dai- 
mon," 18. 

Randolph, John, defied by Josiah 
Quincy, 18. 

Rebellion, The, its Causes and Con- 
sequences, 171. 

Reconstruction, 171. 

Reno, General, 181. 

Renouf, Edward Augustus, class- 
mate of J. R. L., 32. 

Riano, Don Juan, archaeologist, 236. 

Riverside Press, 165. 

Rogers, Nathaniel P., editor of the 
National Anti-Slavery Standard, 
173, 174. 

Rousseau, Jean Jacques, 46. 



INDEX 



301 



"Row up," 47. n 

Rowfant Club, Cleveland, issues 
limited edition of Lowell's first 
course of Lowell Institute lec- 
tures, 114. 

Royal Library at Madrid, 127. 

Russell, Francis Lowell Dutton, 180. 

Russell, James, great-grandfather 
of J. R. L., 7, 277. 

Russell, Lord John, 249. 

Russell, Warren Dutton, 180. 

Sagasta, Spanish premier, 222, 223. 

St. John in Patmos, 44. 

Salamanca, General, 227. 

Salignac's drill corps, 184. 

Sampson, Charles, publisher, 153, 
154. 

Santiago de Cuba, 225. 

Saturday Club; first dinner-party, 
156, 157 ; history and membership, 
201, 202, 266. 

Sawyer, Warren, 67. 

Saxton, General, 187. 

Scates, Charles Woodman, at Har- 
vard, 27, 29, 30, 35, 36 ; lawyer in 
Carolina, 29 ; friend of J. R. L., 
33, 50. 

Schmitt, Captain, 183. 

Scotch the Snake or Kill it ? 171. 

Second-sight possessed by J. R. L., 
3,4,277. 

Sedgwick, Mrs. T., 186. 

Serenade, The, 74, 75. 

Shelley's poems published in Phila- 
delphia, 23. 

Shepherd of King Admetus, The, 
85. 

Sheridan, Richard Brinsley, 9. 

Sickles, D. E., 208, 225. 

Silliman, Benjamin, 57. 

Sixth Massachusetts Regiment in 
Baltimore, 181. 

Skillygolee, 37. 

Skillygoliana, 37, 38. 

Slattery, John, Irish suspect, 244. 

Slaves freed in Massachusetts, 6. 



Smalley, George W., on J. R. L. as 
minister to England, 252, 260, 261, 
275. 

Smith, Abiel, benefactor of Har- 
vard, 125, 126. 

Smith, Adam, 126. 

Smith professorship at Harvard, 19, 
20, 126, 127, 130. 

Societies at Harvard, 16, 26-29. 

Somerset case. See Mansfield, Lord, 
6. 

Sonnet to Keats, 85. 

Sophocles, Professor, 170. 

Sould, Pierre, minister to Spain, 217, 
218. 

South, Dr., 282. 

Southborough, J. R. L.'s residence 
in, 265, 276. 

Southern Literary Magazine, 82. 

Spain, American relations with, 208, 
215-221, 225-228. 

Spanish people, 222, 230, 231. 

Sparks, Jared, president of Harvard, 
41, 69, 129, 130, 133, 152, 193. 

Spectator, The, quoted, 260. 

Spence family, J. R. L.'s maternal 
ancestors, 3, 276. 

Star Chamber, 104. 

Stearns, Elijah Wyman, 50. 

Stearns, Edward, 67. 

Stedman, Edmund 0., 169. 

Stephen, Leslie, 180, 181. 

Sterling, John, 106. 

Story, Judge Joseph, professor of 
law at Harvard, 32, 81. 

Story, Mary, 71, 72. 

Story, William Wetmore, classmate 
of Lowell and Dr. Hale, 23 ; visits 
West Point, 23 ; assists Nathan 
Hale in the Boston Miscellany, 
35 ; contributes to Harvardiana, 
36 ; member of " The Band," 70, 
74, 76; legal work, 79; with 
Lowell in Rome, 163, 209 ; work 
as a sculptor, 209 ; later meet- 
ing with Lowell, 253 ; separation, 
266. 



302 



INDEX 



Stowe, Calvin Ellis, anecdote of, 
187. 

Stowe, Harriet Beecher, 83. 

Strauss's Leben Jesu, 59. 

Summer Shower, poem by Longfel- 
low, 20. 

Sumner, Charles, his classical schol- 
arship, 14 ; trained in English by 
E. T. Channing, 19; contributor 
to North American Review, 61 ; 
lectures in Boston, 67; member 
of the Saturday Club, 202. 

Supreme Court of Mass. frees slaves, 
6. 

Taylor, Jeremy, 282. 

Tacitus, Wells's edition of, printed 

in Cambridge, 13. 
Talbot, William H. Fox, inventor of 

photography, 31. 
Tempora Mutantur, occasion of its 

composition, 210. 
Tennyson's poems at Harvard, 21. 
Texas, annexation of, 96. 
Thayer, William R., 40. 
Thiers, President, Lowell's judgment 

of, 206. 
Thomas, Isaiah, publisher of the 

first American Bible, 154 
Thoreau, Henry D., at Harvard, 25 ; 

in Concord, 43, 44. 
Thorndike, Israel, benefactor of 

Harvard, 68. 
"Three Thousand New England 

Clergymen," memorial addressed 

to, 101. 
Thursday lecture, 103. 
Tieknor, George, first " Smith pro- 
fessor " at Harvard, 20, 126, 

127. 
Tieknor & Fields, booksellers, 65, 

154, 155. 
Tilden, Samuel J., 212, 213. 
Times, The London, 209, 210. 
To Lamartine, 177. 
To Perdita Singing, 85. 
Tory refugees, 1. 



Traill, Mary, grandmother of J. R. 
L.,3. 

Traill, Robert, of Orkney, great- 
grandfather of J. R. L., 3. 

Traill family, ancestors of J. R. L., 
3, 276. 

Transcendentalists, 202, 203. 

Treadwell, Daniel, instructor in 
science at Harvard, 23. 

Trench, Dean, 254. 

Tribune. See New York Tribune. 

Trimmers, Miss, 11. 

Troil, Minna, 3. 

Tuckerman, Jane Frances, 72. 

Tuckerman, John Francis, 72, 74. 

Tudor, William, 58, 264. 

Tupper, Martin, 281. 

Turgot, Soule's duel with, 217. 

Two, The, 85. 

Tyler, John, President of the U. S., 
his position on the annexation of 
Texas, 96 ; his third veto, 111. 

Ultra- Americanism of Lowell, 275. 

Uncle Tom's Cabin translated into 
German, 138. $ 

Undergraduates' attitude toward in- 
structors, 140, 141. 

Underwood, F. H., 157, 159. 

University Hall, Harvard College, 
on title-page of Harvardiana, 37. 

University of Cincinnati, foundation 
of, 32. 

Ursuline Convent, Charlestown, 78. 

Useful Knowledge Society, 105. 

Vallandigham, Clement Laird, 162. 
Virginius massacre, 208, 225. 
Virtuoso's Collection, A. 
Vision of Sir Launfal, The, 163. 
"Voluntaries" at Harvard, 15. 

Walker, James, president of Har- 
vard, 57, 133, 134, 170, 193, 200. 
Walpole, Horace, 63. 
Ware, Henry, lectures in Boston, 106. 
War Songs for Freemen, 185. 



INDEX 



303 



Warren, George, 67. 

Washburn, Edward A., classmate of 
J. R. L., 32 ; contributor to Har- 
vardiana, 36. 

Washington in Cambridge, 3 ; visits 
Boston in 1792, 18; visits Gov- 
ernor Shirley in Boston in 1756, 
65. 

Webster, Daniel, 57, 59, 67. 

Webster's Dictionary, motto of, 272, 
273. 

Weekly Pasquil, 176. 

Wells, William, teacher of J. R. L., 
13. 

Welsh, John, minister to England, 
239. 

Wendell, Barrett, his paper on Low- 
ell, 139, 140. 

West Church, Boston, 9, 11. 

West Indies in the Civil War, 218- 
220. 

West Point, visit to, 23. 

What is there in the Midnight 
Breeze ? hitherto unpublished 
poem by J. R. L., 34, 35. 

Wheeler, Charles Stearns, one of 
the editors of Harvardiana, 25- 
27. 

Whipple, Edwin P., 67, 158, 202. 



Whitby, a favorite resort of J. R. L., 

240, 279-281, 283. 
White, Maria. See Lowell, Maria 

White. 
White, William Abijah, brother of 

Maria White LoweU, 70, 74, 78, 

79. 
White, William Orne, his classical 

scholarship, 14. 
Whitman, Walt, 84. 
Whittier, John G., 202. 
Wilberforce, William, 9. 
Wilbur, Parson, 44, 45. 
Williams, Henry, 27. 
Willis, N. P., his criticism of Lowell 

as an editor, 88, 148; as a poet, 

90. 
Wilson, Henry, 175, 179. 
Winthrop, John, 160. 
Winthrop, Robert C, 67. 
Winthrop, Theodore, killed near 

Hampton, 161 ; a contributor to 

The Atlantic Monthly, 161. 
World's Fair, The (poem), 210. 
Worthington, Governor, of Ohio, 31. 

"Yankee Plato," 203. 
Year's Life, A, 12, 74, 93-95. 
Young, Edward, 281. 



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